1. society
2. unrest and war

The
Civil War
at 150:
Echoes from the
Blue and Gray
What Caused the American Civil War?
A number of circumstances, tracing back to political issues and disagreements that began soon after the American
Revolution, ultimately led the United States into Civil War.
Between the years 1800 and 1860, arguments between the
North and South grew more intense, slavery being the central issue of the conflicts, although not the only one.
Another point of major contention between North and
South involved taxes paid on goods brought into this country
from foreign countries. This tax was called a tariff. Southerners felt these tariffs were unfair and aimed primarily toward
them because they imported a wider variety of goods than
most Northerners. Taxes were also placed on many Southern
goods that were shipped to foreign countries, an expense not
always applied to Northern exports of equal value.
In the years before the Civil War, political power in the
Federal government, centered in Washington, D.C., was
changing. Northern and mid-western states were becoming
more and more influential as their populations increased.
Southern states lost political power because their populations
did not increase as rapidly. As one portion of the nation grew
larger than another, people began to perceive the nation as
divided into sections, distinguished by different economies,
cultures, and even values. This was called sectionalism.
A Cotton Gin
that much within a half hour. This invention revolutionized
the cotton industry and Southern planters saw their profits
soar as more and more of them relied on cotton as their main
cash crop. Slaves were a central part of the cotton industry.
(View the Census of 1860 with the number of slaves by state
at: www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html)
Slavery, a part of life in America since the early colonial
period, had become more acceptable in the South than the
North. Southern planters relied on slave labor to run larger
farms or plantations and make them profitable. Slaves also
provided labor for various household chores. The institution
of slavery did not sit well with many northerners who felt
that slavery was uncivilized and should be abolished. Those
who held those beliefs, called abolitionists, thought that
owning slaves for any reason was wrong. They vehemently
disagreed with the South’s laws and beliefs concerning slavery. Yet slavery had been a part of the Southern way of life
for well over 200 years and was protected not only by state
laws, but Federal law as well. The Constitution of the United
A map showing Sectionalism
Just as the original thirteen colonies fought for their independence almost 100 years earlier, the Southern states felt a
growing need for freedom from the central Federal authority
in Washington. Southerners believed that state laws carried
more weight than Federal laws, and where there was a conflict, they should abide by state regulations first. This issue
was called State’s Rights and became a hot topic in congress.
However, the main quarrel between the North and South,
and the most emotional one, was over the issue of slavery.
America was an agricultural nation and crops such as cotton
were in demand around the world. Cotton grew well in the
southern climate, but it was a difficult plant to gather and
process. Labor in the form of slaves was used on large plantations to plant and harvest cotton as well as sugar, rice, and
other cash crops. The invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli
Whitney in 1794 had made cotton more profitable for Southern growers. Before this invention, it took one person all day
to process two pounds of cotton by hand, a slow and inefficient method. Whitney’s Cotton Gin machine could process
Frederick Douglass
States guaranteed the right to own property and protected
citizens against the seizure of property. A slave was viewed as
property in the South and was important to the economics
of the Southern cotton industry. The people of the Southern
states did not appreciate Northerners, especially the abolitionists, telling them that slave ownership was a great wrong.
This created a great amount of debate, mistrust, and misunderstanding.
The first confrontation over slavery occurred in the West
in 1819. Missouri applied for admission to the Union as a
slave state. The admission of Missouri would upset the balance of power in the Senate where at the time there were 11
free states and 11 slave states. Senator Henry Clay proposed
what became known as the Missouri Compromise. In 1820,
he suggested that Missouri enter as a slave state and Maine as
a free state to keep the balance of power. The Compromise
of 1850 also addressed balance of power, admitting California as a free state, but allowing voters in the Utah and New
Mexico territories to decide if they wanted slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 proved very controversial. It required that all citizens were obligated to return runaway slaves. People who helped slaves escape would be jailed
and fined. The law enraged Northerners because it made
them feel as if they were being forced to perpetuate the slave
system they opposed. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass
and many others involved with the Underground Railroad
worked to subvert the law.
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This novel told of the story of Uncle Tom, an enslaved
African American, and his cruel master, Simon Legree. In
the novel, Stowe wrote of the evils and cruelty of slavery. It
helped change the way many Northerners felt about slavery.
Slavery was not only a political problem, but also a moral
problem in the eyes of many Northerners.
Many Americans felt that slavery should be allowed in the
new territories such as Kansas and Missouri, while others
were set against it. The Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 led to
“bleeding Kansas”, a bitter sectional war that pitted neighbor against neighbor.
In 1857, the United States Supreme Court made a landmark ruling in the Dred Scott Decision. Dred Scott was a
slave who applied for freedom. He claimed that because his
master had taken him to the free territories of Illinois and
Wisconsin, he should be free. The court ruled that because
Dred Scott was not considered a citizen, but property, he
could not file a lawsuit. The Court also ruled that Congress
had no power to decide the issue of slavery in the territories.
This meant that slavery was legal in all the territories and the
Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
Anti-slavery leaders in the North cited the controversial
Supreme Court decision as evidence that Southerners wanted to extend slavery throughout the nation. Southerners approved the Dred Scott decision, believing Congress had no
right to prohibit slavery in the territories. Abraham Lincoln
reacted with disgust to the ruling and was spurred into political action, publicly speaking out against it.
In 1859, a radical abolitionist from Kansas named John
Brown raided the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the hopes of supplying weapons to an army of slaves
who would revolt against their southern masters. A number of people were taken hostage and several killed, among
them the mayor of Harpers Ferry. Brown was cornered with
several of his followers in a fire engine house, first by Virginia militia and then by Federal troops sent to arrest him
and his raiders. These troops, commanded by Union Colonel Robert E. Lee (who later became the leading Confederate general), stormed the building and captured Brown and
several of his men. Brown was tried for his crimes, found
guilty, and hanged in Charlestown, WV. Though John
John Brown
Brown’s raid had failed, it fueled the passions of northern
abolitionists, who made him a martyr. It was reported that
bells tolled in sympathy to John Brown in Northern cities on the day he was executed. (Read his Trial Speech at:
www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2943t.html)
This incident inflamed passions in the South, where
Southern leaders saw this as another reminder how little their
region’s interests were represented in Federal law, which they
considered sympathetic to runaways and anti-slavery organizations.
Republican Party, viewed by many as the party friendly to
abolitionists and northern businessmen, and the election of
that party’s candidate was the last straw.
The Crittenden Compromise was one of several lastditch efforts to resolve the secession crisis of 1860-1861 by
political negotiation. Authored by Kentucky Senator John
Crittenden (whose two sons would become generals on opposite sides of the Civil War) it was an attempt to resolve the
crisis by addressing the concerns that led the states of the
Lower South to contemplate secession. It failed by one vote.
Southern governors and political leaders called for state
referendums to consider articles of secession. South Carolina
was the first state to officially secede from the United States on
December 20, 1860 followed by six other Southern states in
January and February 1861. These seven states established a
constitution and formed a new nation, which they named the
Confederate States of America. They elected Jefferson Davis, a Democratic senator and champion of states rights from
Mississippi, as the first president. (View the Constitution at:
www.civil-war.net/pages/confederate_constitution.asp)
After South Carolina seceded, Major Robert Anderson
transferred his small garrison from the coastal Fort Moultrie
to Fort Sumter, located on an island in Charleston Harbor,
to secure that important bastion for the Union. In 1861, the
newly established Confederate government demanded Anderson’s withdrawal. Despite dwindling supplies, Anderson’s
reply was: “I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of
your communication, demanding the evacuation of this fort,
and to say, in reply thereto, that it is a demand with which
I regret that my sense of honor and my obligations to my
Government prevent my compliance.”
On April 12, 1861 the Confederate States of America
attacked Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The bombardment
lasted 34 hours and the fort was heavily damaged. Anderson
surrendered the fort and its garrison to the Confederate commanders. The Civil War had begun.
Abraham Lincoln
Confederate Attack on Fort Sumter:
Harper’s Weekly 1861
The debate became very bitter. Southern politicians outwardly charged that their voices were not being heard in
Congress. Some Southern states wanted to secede, or break
away from the United States of America and govern themselves. Emotions reached a fever pitch when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860. A
member of the anti-slavery Republican Party, he vowed to
keep the country united and the new western territories free
from slavery. Many Southerners, who were Democrats, were
afraid that Lincoln was not sympathetic to their way of life
and would not treat them fairly. The growing strength of the
President Lincoln responded with a call for 75,000 volunteers from 23 states still loyal to the Union, to enlist and put
down what he argued was a treacherous act of rebellion (four
border slave states remained in the Union and two Union
states were added during the Civil War). Four more states seceded making eleven Confederate states: Alabama, Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The war that
President Lincoln had tried to avoid began anyway. War talk
was on everyone’s lips and sharp divisions took place, even
among families and neighbors.
At first, no one believed the war would last very long.
Some people said it would take only a few months and the
fellows who volunteered to fight would come home heroes
within a few weeks. No one realized how determined the
South was to be independent, nor did the South realize how
determined the North was to end the rebellion. Armies had
to be raised in the North and the South, and every state was
asked to raise regiments of volunteers to be sent for service in
the field. Many young men chose to enlist and volunteered
for military service. In the South, men readily went to war to
protect their homes and save the Southern way of life. Most
did not believe that the government in Washington was looking out for the South’s interests and they were better off as a
new nation where the states would make up their own laws.
Many were happy to be called rebels because they thought
they were fighting against a tyrant like their forefathers did
against the British during the American Revolution. Northern men volunteered to put down the rebellion of southern
states and bind the nation back together. Most felt that the
Southerners had rebelled without good cause and had to be
taught a lesson. Some also felt that slavery was an evil and the
war was a way to abolish it.
Few people realized how terrible war really was and how
hard life as a soldier could be. The armies were raised and
marched off to war. It was only after many battles and many
lives were lost that the American people recognized the horror of war. The soldiers communicated with their families
and loved ones and told them of the hardships they endured
and terrible scenes they had witnessed.
The fighting of the American Civil War would last four
long years at a cost of 620,000 lives. In the end the Northern
states prevailed, our country remained united, the Federal
government was changed forever, and slavery came to an
end.
Learn more about the Causes of the Civil War and view a
Timeline at: http://civilwarcauses.org
www.civilwar.org/150th-anniversary/this-day-in-the-civilwar.html
(Note: Research topics in bold type)
Written by: Joe Ryan – adapted with additional content
added
Source: http://americancivilwar.com
Newspaper Activity:
There are civil wars and wars of liberation taking place all over the world.
Find news stories in the print edition
and conduct searches in the e-edition
of the newspaper to find stories about
these wars. Where is the war taking
place? What are the issues that are being fought over? Do you believe that
one party is fighting for freedom and
liberty like our own? Should the country remain together as one or separate
because of the differences involved?
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union (short excerpt)
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D. 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution
of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from
the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these
encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of
America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen
American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, “that they are, and
of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract
alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.”…
Full text of this and other state declarations at: www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources
Abraham Lincoln
In 1846 Lincoln was elected as a representative in the 30th
U.S. Congress. Lincoln’s term in Congress was fairly uneventful and upon its completion he returned to Springfield
and his law practice.
Lincoln was thrust back into politics with the 1854 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act allowed the inhabitants of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide
the slavery issue through election. This in effect repealed the
Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had admitted Maine
as a free state, Missouri as a slave state, and prohibited slavery
in the old Louisiana Purchase Territory above 36° 30’.
In 1854, his profession as a lawyer had almost superseded
the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been before. Lincoln took to the stump and was elected to the Illinois
legislature in 1854. He resigned that seat, however, so that he
could run for the U.S. Senate. The Senate had long been
Lincoln’s ultimate political goal. Lincoln, however, withdrew
his name from consideration and supported another Whig
candidate in order to prevent the election of a rival.
Throughout 1855-57, Lincoln continued to practice law,
but also traveled extensively giving political speeches. In
1858, he again ran for the U.S. Senate, this time against Stephen A. Douglas.
On June 16, 1858 Lincoln accepted the Republican nomination to run against Douglas and delivered his famous
“House Divided Speech” in the Illinois state house.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this
government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half
free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not
expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be
divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either
the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it,
and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief
that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates
will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the
States, old as well as new—North as well as South.”
With that speech Lincoln began what came to be known
as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, which included stops at
seven communities across the state of Illinois. While Lincoln
lost the Senate race to Douglas, he gained valuable exposure
that helped propel him to a higher office two years later.
He was not convinced of his presidential potential, but
admitted, “The taste is in my mouth a little.”
On May 18, 1860 he was chosen as the Republican nominee for the presidency and received official notification of his
nomination in his Springfield home. Given that the Demo-
cratic Party was split with three candidates, Lincoln’s presidency was all but assured.
Lincoln became the first Republican elected to the presidency on November 4, 1860. On March 3, 1861 Abraham
Lincoln was inaugurated as the sixteenth president of the
United States thus beginning what would prove to be the
most difficult presidency in history.
Lincoln opposed secession for these reasons:
1. Physically the states cannot separate.
2. Secession is unlawful.
3 A government that allows secession will disintegrate into
anarchy.
4. That Americans are not enemies, but friends.
5. Secession would destroy the world’s only existing democracy, and prove for all time, to future Americans and to
the world, that a government of the people cannot survive.
Even during this time of crisis, Lincoln held out the hope
for peace in his inaugural address: “We are not enemies, but
friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have
strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and
patriot grave, to every living heart and heath-stone, all over
this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when
again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of
our nature.”
This last minute appeal failed to stop the approaching
Civil War.
Newspaper Activity:
You’ve just been elected President. Use newspaper stories and
editorials to understand the issues that you’ll need to address
as President. You may also want
to search online for recent inaugural speeches. Now write your
own inaugural speech detailing
what the issues are and what you
plan to do about them. Give your
speech to your class.
Lincoln’s First Inauguration
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis was president of the Confederate States of
America throughout its existence during the American Civil
War (1861- 65).
Jefferson Davis was the 10th and last child of Samuel
Emory Davis, a Georgia-born planter of Welsh ancestry.
When he was three, his family settled on a plantation called
Rosemont at Woodville, MS. At seven he was sent for three
years to a Dominican boys’ school in Kentucky, and at 13 he
entered Transylvania College, Lexington, KY. He later spent
four years at the United States Military Academy at West
Point, graduating in 1828.
Davis served as a lieutenant in the Wisconsin Territory and
afterward in the Black Hawk War under the future president,
then Colonel Zachary Taylor, whose daughter Sarah Knox he
married in 1835. According to a contemporary description,
Davis in his mid-20s was “handsome, witty, sportful, and
altogether captivating.” In 1835 Davis resigned his commission and became a planter near Vicksburg, MS, on land given
him by his rich eldest brother, Joseph. Within three months,
his bride died of malarial fever. Grief-stricken, Davis stayed
in virtual seclusion for seven years, creating a plantation out
of a wilderness and reading prodigiously on constitutional
law and world literature.
In 1845, Davis was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and, in the same year, married Varina Howell, a
Natchez aristocrat who was 18 years his junior. In 1846 he
resigned his seat in Congress to serve in the war with Mexico
as colonel in command of the First Mississippi volunteers,
and he became a national hero for winning the Battle of
Buena Vista (1847) with tactics that won plaudits even in
the European press. After returning, severely wounded, he
entered the Senate and soon became chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. President Franklin Pierce made him
Secretary of War in 1853. Davis enlarged the army, strengthened coastal defenses, and directed three surveys for railroads
to the Pacific.
During the period of mounting intersectional strife, Davis spoke widely in both North and South, urging harmony
between the sections. When South Carolina withdrew from
the Union in December 1860, Davis still opposed secession,
though he believed that the Constitution gave a state the
right to withdraw from the original compact of states. He
was among those who believed that the newly elected president, Abraham Lincoln, would coerce the South and that the
result would be disastrous.
On Jan. 21, 1861, twelve days after Mississippi seceded,
Davis made a moving farewell speech in the Senate and
pleaded eloquently for peace. Before he reached his Brierfield plantation, he was commissioned major general to head
Mississippi’s armed forces and prepare its defense. But within
two weeks, the Confederate Convention in Montgomery,
AL, chose him as Provisional President of the Confederacy.
He was inaugurated on Feb. 18, 1861, and his first act was to
send a peace commission to Washington, D.C., to prevent an
armed conflict. Lincoln refused to see his emissaries and the
next month decided to send armed ships to Charleston, S.C.,
to resupply the beleaguered Union garrison at Fort Sumter.
Davis reluctantly ordered the bombardment of the fort (April
12-13), which marked the beginning of the American Civil
War. Two days later Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers, a
move that brought about the secession of Virginia and three
other states from the Union.
Davis faced a dire crisis. A president without precedent, he
had to mold a brand-new nation in the midst of a war. With
only one-fourth the white population of the Northern states,
with a small fraction of the North’s manufacturing capacity, and with inferior railroads, no navy, no powder mills,
no shipyard, and an appalling lack of arms and equipment,
The Significance of Names
During the Civil War, the Union and Confederate armies tended to give battles different names. Thus
the battle known to the Union as Bull Run was called Manassas by the Confederacy. Similarly, the Battle
of Antietam was known by the Confederacy as the Battle of Sharpsburg. In general, the North tended
to name battles and armies after bodies of water (such as the Army of the Potomac or the Army of
the Mississippi), while the Confederacy tended to name battles after towns and armies after land
areas (such as the Army of Northern Virginia or the Army of Kentucky). It seems likely that the
Confederacy used such names to convey a sense that its soldiers were defending something of
pivotal importance: their homeland.
There were also several different names for the war used by each side. Among them are:
Union Names for the War
The Civil War
The War for the Union
The Southern Rebellion
The War of Abolition
The War Against Slavery
Confederate Names for the War
The War Between the States
The War for States’ Rights
The War to Suppress Yankee Arrogance
The War for Southern Independence
The Yankee Invasion
the South was in poor condition to withstand invasion. Its
only resources seemed to be cotton and courage. But at Bull
Run (Manassas, Va.), on July 21, 1861, the Confederates
routed Union forces. In the meantime, with makeshift materials, Davis created factories for producing powder, cannon,
side arms, and quartermaster stores. In restored naval yards,
gunboats were constructed, and the South’s inadequate railroads and rolling stock were patched up repeatedly. Davis
sent agents to Europe to buy arms and ammunition, and he
dispatched representatives to try to secure recognition from
England and France.
Davis made the inspired choice of Robert E. Lee as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia in June 1862. Lee
was his most valuable field commander and his most loyal
personal supporter.
Davis had innumerable troubles during his presidency,
including a squabbling Congress, a dissident vice president,
and the constant opposition of extreme states’ rights advocates, who objected vigorously to the conscription law he
had enacted over much opposition in 1862. But despite a
gradually worsening military situation, unrelieved internal
political tensions, continuing lack of manpower and armament, and skyrocketing inflation, he remained resolute in his
determination to carry on the war.
Nearing the end of The Civil War, after Lee surrendered
to the North without Davis’s approval, Davis and his cabinet
moved south, hoping to reach the trans-Mississippi area and
continue the struggle until better terms could be secured from
the North. At dawn on May 10, 1865, Davis was captured
near Irwinville, Ga. He was imprisoned in a damp casemate
at Fort Monroe, Va., and was put in leg-irons. Though outraged Northern public opinion brought about his removal
to healthier quarters, Davis remained a prisoner under guard
for two more years. Finally, in May 1867, he was released
on bail and went to Canada to regain his shattered health.
Several notable Northern lawyers offered their free services
to defend him in a treason trial, for which Davis longed. The
government, however, never forced the issue, many believe
because it feared that such a trial might establish that the
original Constitution gave the states a right to secede. The
case was finally dropped on Dec. 25, 1868.
First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas): An End to Innocence
Courier & Ives Lithograph: Library of Congress
To many Americans, the firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate troops on the morning of April 12, 1861, signaled the
separation of the United States into two nations. Soon thereafter, both the North and the South began preparing for war
— enlisting armies, training troops, and raising rhetoric to a
fevered pitch. At first, Americans viewed the conflict roman-
General Thomas “Stonewall ” Jackson
tically, as a great adventure. To many, it was a crusade of sorts
that would be decided quickly, and would return both the
North and South to a peaceful way of life, either as one nation or two. Scarcely three months later, however, events near
the small Virginia community of Manassas Junction shocked
the nation into realizing that the war might prove longer and
more costly than anyone could have imagined — not only to
the armies, but also to the nation as a whole.
The First Battle of Bull Run (called First Manassas by the
South) was fought on July 21, 1861. Although neither army
was adequately prepared at this early stage of the war, political considerations and popular pressures, including the fact
that many of the Union’s 90-day enlistments were about to
expire, caused the Federal government to order General Irvin
McDowell to advance southwest of Washington to Bull Run
in a move against Richmond, VA. The 22,000 Confederates
under General P.G.T. Beauregard, after initial skirmishing,
had retired behind Bull Run in defensive positions three days
earlier. To counter a Union flanking movement, the Confederates swiftly moved in 10,000 additional troops from the
Shenandoah under General Joseph E. Johnston. On July 21
the Union army assaulted the Confederates. The battle raged
back and forth.
During the battle, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson rushed his
Confederate troops forward to close a gap in the line against
a determined Union attack. Upon observing Jackson, one of
his fellow generals reportedly said, “Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall!”— a comment that spawned
Jackson’s nickname. Jackson was commissioned a major general in October 1861.
Finally the arrival of Johnston’s last brigade forced the Federals into a disorganized retreat to Washington. The victors
were also exhausted and did not pursue them. Among the
37,000 Northern men, casualties numbered about 3,000;
out of 35,000 Southern troops, between 1,700 and 2,000
were killed, wounded or captured.
Among the victims were not only the dead and wounded
of the opposing armies, but members of the civilian population, and, ultimately, the wide-eyed innocence of a nation
that suddenly realized it had gone to war with itself.
The importance of this battle was not so much in the
movement of the armies or the strategic territory gained or
lost, but rather in the realization that the struggle was more
an apocalyptic event than the romantic adventure earlier envisioned.
Learn more at:
www.civilwar.org/battlefields/bullrun.html
www.nps.gov/mana
Major Sullivan Ballou Letter, July 14, 1861
Excerpts from a letter written by Maj. Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah at home in Rhode Island. Ballou died a week later, at the First Battle of Bull Run. He was 32. Read the full letter at:
www.pbs.org/civilwar/war/ballou_letter.html
General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (1824-63) was a war
hero and one of the South’s most successful generals during The Civil War. After a difficult childhood, he graduated
from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in
time to fight in the Mexican War (1846-48). He then left the
military to pursue a teaching career at the Virginia Military
Institute. After his home state of Virginia seceded from the
Union in 1861, Jackson joined the Confederate army and
quickly forged his reputation for fearlessness and tenacity
during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign later the following
year. He earned his nickname “Stonewall” at the First Battle
of Bull Run (Manassas). He served under General Robert
E. Lee (1807-70) for much of the Civil War. Jackson played
a decisive role in many significant battles until his mortal
wounding by friendly fire at the age of 39 during the Battle
of Chancellorsville in May 1863.
(Learn more about all the generals of the Civil War at:
www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies)
Camp Clark, Washington, DC
My very dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days — perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should
not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be
no more.
Our movement may be one of a few days’ duration and full of pleasure — and it may be one of severe
conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on
the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause
in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went
before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing — perfectly willing — to
lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.
But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I
lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with
cares and sorrows… my unbounded love for you, my darling
wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless,
contest with my love of country…
Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me
to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence
could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me
like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these
chains to the battlefield…
Battle of Antietam
The Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862 was the
culmination of the Maryland Campaign of 1862, the first
invasion of the North by Confederate General Robert E. Lee
and the Army of Northern Virginia. It ranks as the bloodiest
one-day battle in American history.
After Lee’s dramatic victory at the Second Battle of Manassas August 28-30, he wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis that, “we cannot afford to be idle.” Lee had several
goals: keep the offensive and secure Southern independence
through victory in the North; influence the fall mid-term
elections; obtain much needed supplies; move the war out of
Virginia, possibly into Pennsylvania; and liberate Maryland,
a Union state, but a slave-holding border state divided in its
sympathies.
Lee sent a “Proclamation to the People of Maryland”
saying “…the Southern people will rejoice to welcome
you to your natural position among them,” an invitation to join the Confederacy. (Read the Proclamation at:
www.civilwarhome.com/leeproclamation.htm)
After splashing across the Potomac River and arriving in
Frederick, MD, Lee boldly divided his army to capture the
Union garrison stationed at Harpers Ferry. Gateway to the
Shenandoah Valley, Harpers Ferry was a vital location on
the Confederate lines of supply and communication back to
Virginia. The 12,000 Union soldiers at Harpers Ferry threatened Lee’s link south. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and
about half of the army were sent to capture Harpers Ferry.
The rest of the Confederates moved north and west toward
South Mountain and Hagerstown, MD.
Back in Washington D.C., President Abraham Lincoln
turned to Major General George B. McClellan to protect the
capital and respond to the invasion.
Army with valuable information concerning the Army of
Northern Virginia’s movements and campaign plans. Upon
receiving Lee’s “Lost Order” McClellan exclaimed “Here
is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will
be willing to go home.” (Read the “Lost Order 191 at:
www.civilwarhome.com/antietam.htm)
McClellan quickly reorganized the demoralized Army
of the Potomac and advanced towards Lee. The armies
first clashed on South Mountain where on September 14,
the Confederates tried unsuccessfully to block the Federals
at three mountain passes: Turner’s, Fox’s and Crampton’s
Gaps.
Following the Confederate retreat from South Mountain,
Lee considered returning to Virginia. However, with word
of Jackson’s capture of Harpers Ferry on September 15, Lee
decided to make a stand at Sharpsburg. The Confederate
commander gathered his forces on the high ground west
of Antietam Creek with Gen. James Longstreet’s command
holding the center and the right, while Stonewall Jackson’s
men filled in on the left. However there was risk with the
Potomac River behind them and only one crossing back to
Virginia. Lee and his men watched the Union army gather
Battle of Antietam: Kurz & Allison Lithograph c.1888
Library of Congress
Lincoln with McClellan at Antietam
McClellan had an advantage. Robert E. Lee had issued
Special Order 191 during the Maryland campaign, before
the Battle of Antietam. A copy of the order was lost then
recovered by Union soldiers. The order provided the Union
on the east side of the Antietam.
Thousands of soldiers in blue marched into position
throughout September 15th and 16th as McClellan prepared
for his attempt to drive Lee from Maryland. McClellan’s plan
was, in his words, to “attack the enemy’s left,” and when
“matters looked favorably,” attack the Confederate right, and
“whenever either of those flank movements should be successful to advance our center.” As the opposing forces moved
into position during the rainy night of September 16, one
Pennsylvanian remembered, “…all realized that there was
ugly business and plenty of it just ahead.”
The twelve-hour battle began at dawn on September 17,
1863. For the next seven hours there were three major Union
attacks on the Confederate left, moving from north to south.
Gen. Joseph Hooker’s command led the first Union assault.
Then Gen. Joseph Mansfield’s soldiers attacked, followed by
Gen. Edwin Sumner’s men as McClellan’s plan broke down
into a series of uncoordinated Union advances. Savage, incomparable combat raged across the Cornfield, East Woods,
West Woods and the Sunken Road (also called Bloody
Lane) as Lee shifted his men to withstand each of the Union
thrusts. After clashing for over eight hours, the Confederates
The Sunken Road also called Blood Lane
were pushed back but not broken. More than 15,000 soldiers
were killed or wounded.
Neither flank of the Confederate army collapsed far
enough for McClellan to advance his center attack, leaving a sizable Union force that never entered the battle. Despite over 23,000 casualties of the nearly 100,000 engaged,
both armies stubbornly held their ground as the sun set on
the devastated landscape. The next day, September 18, the
opposing armies gathered their wounded and buried their
dead. That night Lee’s army withdrew back across the Potomac to Virginia, ending Lee’s first invasion into the North.
Lee’s retreat to Virginia provided President Lincoln the opportunity he had been awaiting to issue the preliminary
Emancipation Proclamation, followed soon after by the final Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Now the war had a
dual purpose of preserving the Union and ending slavery.
(Credit: www.nps.gov)
Newspaper Activity:
The President is Commander-inChief of U.S. armed forces. Find
newspaper stories about how the
president is using his authority to
wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan, or
other parts of the world. What is
presently occurring? Are U.S. forces
seen as liberators, invaders, or occupation forces? Is the public behind
the war or opposed to it continuing?
How do you feel about the war: is it
justified or not?
The Emancipation Proclamation
January 1, 1863
A Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation Reading With Lincoln’s
Cabinet
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two,
a proclamation was issued by the President of the United
States, containing, among other things, the following, to
wit:
“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held
as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the
people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United
States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and
the Executive Government of the United States, including
the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or
acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts
they may make for their actual freedom.
“That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of
States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall
then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact
that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in
good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States
by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority
of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated,
shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be
deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people
thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.”
Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in
time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war
measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of
January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do
publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days,
from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as
the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States,
the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James
Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary,
St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight
counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of
Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and
Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present,
left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid,
I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within
said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of
the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said
persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free
to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence;
and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed,
they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
And I further declare and make known, that such persons
of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service
of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and
other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious
favor of Almighty God.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of
America the eighty-seventh.
By the President:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.
Union General George B. McClellan
After the disastrous Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull
Run, McClellan was placed in command of what was to become the Army of the Potomac. He was charged with the
defense of the capital and destruction of the enemy’s forces
in northern and eastern Virginia. In November of 1861, he
succeeded General Winfield Scott as general in chief of the
army. His organizational abilities and logistical understanding brought order out of the chaos of defeat, and he was
brilliantly successful in whipping the army into a fighting
unit with high morale, efficient staff, and effective supporting services.
Yet McClellan refused to take the offensive against the
enemy that fall, claiming that the army was not prepared
to move. President Abraham Lincoln was disturbed by the
general’s inactivity and consequently issued his famous General War Order No. 1 (Jan. 27, 1862), calling for the forward
movement of all armies. “Little Mac” was able to convince
the president that a postponement of two months was desirable and also that the offensive against Richmond should
take the route of the peninsula between the York and James
rivers in Virginia.
In the Peninsular Campaign (April 4— July 1, 1862), McClellan achieved far more victories than defeats. But he was
overly cautious and seemed reluctant to pursue the enemy.
Coming to within a few miles of Richmond, he consistently
overestimated the number of troops opposing him, and,
when Confederate forces under General Robert E. Lee began
an all-out attempt to destroy McClellan’s army in the Seven
Days’ Battles (June 25— July 1), McClellan retreated.
Returning to Washington as news of the Union defeat
at the Second Battle of Bull Run (August 29— 30) was received, McClellan was asked to take command of the army
for the defense of the capital. Again exercising his organizing
capability, he was able to rejuvenate Union forces. When Lee
moved north into Maryland, McClellan’s army stopped the
invasion at the Battle of Antietam (September 17). But he
again failed to move rapidly to destroy Lee’s army, and, as
a result, the exasperated president removed him from command in November of 1862.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee served as a captain under General
Winfield Scott in the Mexican War, in which he distinguished himself during the battles of Veracruz, Churubusco,
and Chapultepec. He was slightly wounded in that war and
earned three brevets to colonel. General Scott declared him
to be “the very best soldier that I ever saw in the field.”
In 1852 he was appointed superintendent of West Point.
Three years later, with the approval of Jefferson Davis, then
U.S. secretary of war, he transferred as a lieutenant colonel to
the newly raised Second Cavalry and served in West Texas.
After John Brown’s raid on the U.S. Arsenal and Armory
at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in October
1859, Lee was placed in command of a detachment of marines that captured Brown and his band.
On April 20, 1861, at the outbreak of the American Civil
War, he resigned his commission and three days later was
appointed by Governor John Letcher of Virginia to be commander in chief of the military and naval forces of the state.
When Virginia’s troops were transferred to the Confederate
service, he became, on May 14, 1861, a brigadier general, the
highest rank then authorized. Soon after he was promoted to
full general.
When General Joseph E. Johnston was wounded at the
Battle of Seven Pines on May 31, Lee took command of what
became the Army of Northern Virginia. He successfully repulsed the efforts of Union general George McClellan in the
Peninsula Campaign. Victories were won through Lee’s aggressiveness and daring in the face of McClellan’s timidity
rather than by any comprehensive generalship on Lee’s part,
for he was unable to exercise control over his subordinate
commanders, and individual battles could be considered tactical defeats.
On August 28-30, Lee defeated General John Pope in the
second Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), but when he invaded
Maryland he was checked on September 17 by Union forces
under McClellan at Antietam. On December 13, he defeated General Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg, and it was
here that he made the remark to General James Longstreet
that many of his admirers have tried to explain away: “It is
well war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it.” Lee
loved fighting a war.
Lee’s most brilliantly fought battle was the defeat of Joseph
Hooker at Chancellorsville on May 1-6 1863.
Again invading the North, he was once more checked, this
time at Gettysburg, where his haste in insisting on what became known as Pickett’s Charge, a massed infantry assault
across a wide plain, cost the South dearly.
From the battles of the Wilderness, Spotsylvania and Cold
Harbor in May-June 1864 until the siege of Petersburg from
July 1864 until April 1865, Lee fought what was essentially a
rearguard action. In the winter of 1865, President Davis appointed Lee general in chief of the armies of the Confederate
states, but by that time the Confederates had lost the war.
Lee has been charged with being too bloody-minded, of
fighting on even when he must have known that his cause
was lost. Viewed realistically, this was certainly true; but what
the mind knows, the heart cannot always accept. Lee was not
alone in failing to admit defeat in a cause to which he was
emotionally attached. He fought to the bitter end, and that
end came on April 9, 1865, when he surrendered to General
Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.
Battle of Chanellorsville
Chancellorsville is considered Lee’s greatest victory, but
the Confederate commander’s daring and skill was greatly
helped by Union general Joseph Hooker’s puzzling timidity
once the battle started. Using cunning, and dividing their
forces repeatedly, the massively outnumbered Confederates
drove the Federal army from the battlefield. The cost had
been frightful. The Confederates suffered 14,000 casualties,
while inflicting 17,000.
The Beginning, April 26 - May 1, 1863
Morale in the Federal Army of the Potomac rose with the
appointment of Joseph Hooker to command. Hooker reorganized the army and formed a cavalry corps. He wanted to
strike at Lee’s army while a sizable portion was detached under Longstreet in the Suffolk area. The Federal commander
left a substantial force at Fredericksburg to tie Lee to the hills
where Burnside had been defeated. Another Union force disappeared westward, crossed the Rapidan and Rappahannock
rivers, and converged on Fredericksburg from the west. The
Federal cavalry opened the campaign with a raid on Lee’s line
of communications with the Confederate capital at Richmond. Convinced that Lee would have to retreat, Hooker
trusted that his troops could defeat the Confederates as they
tried to escape his trap.
On April 29, Hooker’s cavalry and three army corps
crossed Kelly’s Ford. His columns split, with the cavalry
Major General Joseph Hooker: Library of Congress
pushing to the west while the army corps secured Getmanna and Ely’s fords. The next day, these columns reunited at
Chancellorsville. Lee reacted to the news of the Federals in
the Wilderness by sending General Richard H. Anderson’s
division to investigate. Finding the Northerners massing in
the woods around Chancellorsville, Anderson commenced
the construction of earthworks at Zoan Church. Confederate reinforcements under Stonewall Jackson marched to help
block the Federal advance, but did not arrive until May 1.
The Confederates had no intention of retreating as Hooker
had predicted.
Hooker’s troops rested at Chancellorsville after executing
what is often considered to be the most daring march of the
war. They had slipped across Lee’s front undetected.
The End, May 1-6 1863
As the Federal army converged on Chancellorsville, General Hooker expected Lee to retreat from his forces, which
totaled nearly 115,000. Although heavily outnumbered with
just under 60,000 troops, Lee had no intention of retreating.
The Confederate commander divided his army: one part remained to guard Fredericksburg, while the other raced west
to meet Hooker’s advance. When Hooker’s column clashed
with the Confederates on May 1, Hooker pulled his troops
back to Chancellorsville, a lone tavern at a crossroads in a
dense wood known locally as The Wilderness. Here Hooker
took up a defensive line, hoping Lee’s need to carry out an
uncoordinated attack through the dense undergrowth would
leave the Confederate forces disorganized and vulnerable.
To retain the initiative, Lee risked dividing his forces still
further, retaining two divisions to focus Hooker’s attention,
while Stonewall Jackson marched the bulk of the Confederate army west across the front of the Federal line to a position
opposite its exposed right flank. Jackson executed this daring
and dangerous maneuver throughout the morning and afternoon of May 2.
Such actions seemed so unthinkable to Hooker that he
could not take it in. He paused to think about it, and his
pause was fatal.
Striking two hours before dusk, Jackson’s men routed the
astonished Federals in their camps. In the gathering darkness, amid the brambles of the Wilderness, the Confederate
line became confused and halted at 9 p.m. to regroup. Riding in front of the lines to reconnoiter, Stonewall Jackson was
accidentally shot and seriously wounded by his own men.
Battle of Chancellorsville: Harper’s Weekly May 23, 1863
shoulder.
On May 3, Jackson’s successor, General J.E.B. Stuart, initiated the bloodiest day of the battle when attempting to reunite his troops with Lee’s. Despite an obstinate defense by
the Federals, Hooker ordered them to withdraw north of the
Chancellor House. The Confederates were converging on
Chancellorsville to finish Hooker when a message came from
Jubal Early that Federal troops had broken through at Fredericksburg. At Salem Church, Lee threw a cordon around
these Federals, forcing them to retreat across the Rappahannock. Disappointed, Lee returned to Chancellorsville, only
to find that Hooker had also retreated across the river. The
battle was over.
Perhaps the most damaging loss to the Confederacy was
the death of Lee’s “right arm,” Stonewall Jackson, who
died of pneumonia on May 10 while recuperating from his
wounds.
Source: “The Atlas of the Civil War” by James M. McPherson
Later that night, his left arm was amputated just below the
Battle of Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg symbolizes the Civil War in our
country’s imagination, and remains one of the defining moments in U.S. history. Of the more than 2,000 land engagements of the War Between the States, Gettysburg is the greatest and by far the bloodiest battle of the four-year national
conflict. It took place July 1-3, 1863.
After two long years of war and fresh from the Confederate triumph at Chancellorsville, the Confederacy’s supreme
commander, General Robert E. Lee, was convinced that the
South’s best hope for victory lay in bringing the war to the
North. He reasoned that a decisive defeat of federal troops
Major General George Meade
on home soil would alter the momentum of the war, create
panic and strengthen the growing peace movement in the
North, and keep the question of British and French recogni-
tion of the Confederacy alive.
In mid-June, Lee boldly ordered his Army of Northern Virginia across the Potomac in a major invasion of the Union’s
heartland. By June 28, his 75,000 soldiers were spread out
in southern Pennsylvania. The Union Army of the Potomac,
with 95,000 men and under a new commander, Major General George Meade, was on the march and the stage was set
for the two forces to meet.
On July 1, Confederate soldiers encountered Union fire in
the small town of Gettysburg. As the day progressed, more
Union and Confederate units converged on the town and
joined the action. By the second day more than 170,000
troops were committed and the two opposing generals had
taken direct charge of their respective battle strategies. And,
as a grim omen of the carnage to come, in the first 8 hours
of fighting, more than 10,000 soldiers were killed, wounded,
or captured.
On the battle’s second day, the conflict intensified with
Confederate forces seeking to penetrate the Union defensive
lines, which had been secured along the high ground around
Gettysburg. Fighting occurred around local landmarks that
would become famous in the titanic three-day battle: Cemetery Hill, Seminary Ridge, Little Round Top, the Peach Orchard, Wheatfield, Culp’s Hill, and Devils Den. The fighting
was so fierce that it proved to be the second bloodiest day of
the Civil War. The First Minnesota Volunteers lost 224 of
the regiment’s 262 officers and men in a successful charge to
hold back the Rebels. At Little Round Top, Colonel Joshua
Chamberlain led the 20th Maine Regiment in a desperate
fight that secured the Union’s left flank. Night fell with neither side having gained much advantage.
On the final day of Gettysburg, General Lee made his fateful decision to attempt a bold frontal assault at the center
of Meade’s entrenched Union lines. After an early afternoon
bombardment that engaged the massed cannon of both sides
in a thundering duel, the three-day battle climaxed with
Pickett’s Charge. Major General George Pickett’s 5,500 men
along with 6,500 others marched in parade-ground precision
across an open field toward enemy lines.
“It was,” a Union colonel was heard to marvel, “the most
Battle of Gettysburg: Lithograph published by Thomas
Kelly, Library of Congress
beautiful thing I ever saw.”
As the Confederate soldiers emerged from the trees on
Seminary Ridge, they formed perfectly aligned battle ranks
in one mile-long line and Pickett gave the order to charge:
“Up men and to your posts! Don’t forget today that you are
from old Virginia.”
Frank Aretas Haskell, a Union soldier from Wisconsin
watched in awe. “Right on they move, as with one soul, in
perfect order, over ridge and slope, through orchard and
meadow and cornfield, magnificent, grim, irresistible. Man
touching man, rank pressing rank… the red flags wave, their
horsemen gallop up and down, the arms of thirteen thousand men, barrel and bayonet, gleam in the sun, a sloping
forest of flashing steel.”
Within moments, Union artillery fire began to cut down
row after row of the Gray column and when the thinned
ranks were closer to Federal lines, the Rebel yells could be
heard above the thundering guns as they made a last, futile dash. Lieutenant William Harmon of the 1st Minnesota Volunteers remembered the chaos as one small Rebel
contingent penetrated the Union line and his unit received
orders to charge: “If men ever became devils that was one of
carried the day. The war was to rage on for two more terrible
years, but the Confederacy never recovered from the losses
at Gettysburg.
The statistics from the Battle of Gettysburg are staggering. More than 170,000 men and 500 cannon had been
positioned over an area encompassing 25 square miles. An
estimated 569 tons of ammunition were expended. The dead
horses and mules numbered 5,000. All told, casualties have
been figured at 51,000, including the 9,600 soldiers who
gave their lives for the Union or Confederate cause.
Pickett’s Charge: Painted by Edwin Forbes, Courtesy Library of Congress
the times. We were crazy with the excitement of the fight.
We just rushed in like wild beasts Men swore and cursed
and struggled and fought,… threw stones, clubbed their
muskets, kicked, yelled, and hurrahed… When the line had
passed, those who were not wounded threw down their arms,
I remember that a Confederate officer… gathered himself up
as our men swept by and coolly remarked, ‘You have done
it this time.’”
In less than one hour more than half of the Confederate
troops had been killed, wounded or captured. Pickett’s divi-
sion alone lost 75 percent of its men. The defending Union
forces suffered only 1,500 casualties. When General Lee
ordered a dazed Pickett to ready his division for a Union
offensive, Pickett’s famous reply came back, “Sir, I have no
division.”
The battle was over. The Army of Northern Virginia staggered into retreat physically and psychologically exhausted.
Lee would never again attempt an offensive against the Union
of such proportions. Although General Meade was criticized
for not immediately pursuing the Confederate army, he had
Major General George Pickett
Gettysburg Address
On November 2, 1863 Lincoln received an invitation to
give a speech at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
He was not to be the main speaker. Edward Everett, a
Republican politician, was invited a month before Lincoln
received his invitation, leaving the President with less than
two weeks to prepare. Lincoln prepared his “few appropriate remarks” in the White House prior to the November 19
ceremony and added some finishing touches in Gettysburg
the night before. Following the two-hour oration from the
featured speaker Everett, Lincoln rose and gave his two-minute “Gettysburg Address.”
Lincoln returned to Washington feeling that his speech
was a failure. Everett wrote to the president, “I should be glad
Artists Conception of Gettysburg Address: Sherwood
Lithograph Co., c.1905, Library of Congress
if I flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the
occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.” Lincoln
responded, “I am pleased to know that, in your judgment,
the little I did say was not entirely a failure.” Little did Lincoln know that his short speech would become one of the
best-remembered and most famous speeches in history.
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived
in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ‘all
men are created equal.’”
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and
so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of it, as a final resting place for those who
died here, that the nation might live. This we may,
in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not
dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow, this ground — The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember what we say here; while it
can never forget what they did here.”
“It is rather for us, the living, to stand here, we
here be dedicated to the great task remaining before
us — that, from these honored dead we take increased
devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the
last full measure of devotion — that we here highly
resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the
nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people by the people for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.”
Newspaper Activity:
The Gettysburg Address is considered one of the most significant
speeches in American history. Research the events leading up to
Lincoln’s delivery of this address
and review the events of that
day. Write a newspaper article
describing Lincoln’s arrival, the
delivery of his address, and the
atmosphere at the cemetery before
and after the speech. Make sure
to provide the 5Ws (who, what,
when, where, why) and H (how)
in the first couple paragraphs.
Colonel Joshua Chamberlain
& The Twentieth Maine Regiment at Gettysburg
Colonel Joshua Chamberlain
This 400-man regiment of lumberjacks, trappers and seamen led by a college professor was the leftmost regiment in the Union army and rendered valuable service in their legendary defense of Little Round Top.
The relentless Confederate assaults shredded Chamberlain’s ranks and the situation looked grim as ammunition began to run out. Soldiers ransacked the cartridge boxes of the wounded and dead strewn on the hillside,
but there was not enough to continue for much longer and that meager supply soon ran out. Chamberlain had
not only been directing his men, but closely observing the southern attacks as well. Sensing exhaustion among
the Confederates who were also probably running out of ammunition, he formulated a final plan to defend the
20th Maine’s part of the shrinking Union line— the 20th Maine was going to make a charge!
“Not a moment was about to be lost! Five minutes more of such a defensive and the last roll call would sound
for us! Desperate as the chances were, there was nothing for it but to take the offensive. I stepped to the colors.
The men turned towards me. One word was enough
— ‘BAYONETS!’ It caught like fire and swept along
the ranks. The men took it up with a shout… it was
vain to order ‘Forward!’… The whole line quivered
from the start;… and the bristling archers swooped
down upon the serried host — down into the face of
half a thousand! Two hundred men!...
“Ranks were broken; some retired before us somewhat hastily; some threw their muskets to the ground
— even loaded; sunk on their knees, threw up their
hands calling out, ‘We surrender. Don’t kill us!’ As if we wanted to do that! We kill only to resist killing. And
these were manly men, whom we could befriend and by no means kill, if they came our way in peace and
good will.”
— Joshua Chamberlain (He became a general later in the war, was wounded several times, and won the
Medal of Honor.)
Charge of the Maine 20th Regiment (July 2, 1863)
New York Draft Riots
In 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Congress passed a conscription law making all men between twenty and forty-five years of age liable for military service.
The attempt to enforce the draft in New York City, on July 13, ignited the most destructive civil disturbance in the city’s history. Soldiers that had just fought at the
Battle of Gettysburg were sent to New York to quell the uprising.
Rioters torched government buildings and, on July 15, fought pitched
battles with troops. Conservative contemporary commentators, concerned about an anti-Union plot, claimed that 1,155 people were killed.
In fact, about 300, more than half of them policemen and soldiers, were
injured, and there were no more than 119 fatalities, most of them rioters.
A majority of the rioters were Irish, living in poverty and misery. The
spark that ignited their grievances and those of other workingmen and
women was the provision in the law that conscription could be avoided
by payment of three hundred dollars, an enormous sum only the rich
could afford. In a context of wartime inflation, black competition for
jobs, and race prejudice among working people, particularly the Irish,
New York’s blacks were chosen as scapegoats for long-accumulated grievances. Many innocent blacks were slain and their homes sacked. A Colored Orphan Asylum was razed. In this intersection of ethnic diversity,
class antagonism, and racism lay the origins of the draft riots.
New York Draft Riots: Harper’s Weekly 1863
Battle and Seige of Vicksburg
From its strategic location on the bluffs overlooking the
Mississippi River, Vicksburg, MS became a fortress. For 47
days in 1863 Vicksburg and its people were entangled in a
siege that changed the course of America’s history.
In October 1862, Vicksburg became the focus of military
operations for Major General Ulysses S. Grant, who was ordered to clear the Mississippi of Confederate resistance. Lt.
General John C, Pemberton, who with about 50,000 scattered Confederate troops, was expected to keep the river
open.
Vicksburg was protected by heavy gun batteries along the
riverfront, swamps and bayous to the north and south and
by a ring of forts mounting 172 guns that guarded all land
approaches. Grant failed in a direct attack on Dec. 29, when
he sent Sherman toward Vicksburg by way of Chickasaw
Bayou, where he was defeated. Grant next tried a series of
amphibious operations aimed at forcing the city’s surrender.
Despite Grant’s large riverboat flotilla and supporting warships, all failed. By spring, Grant decided to march his army
of 45,000 men down the Louisiana side of the Mississippi,
cross the river below Vicksburg, and attack the city from the
south or east.
Grant marched south and then eastward, where he defeated elements of Pemberton’s forces and captured Jackson,
MS, the state capital, on May 14, 1863. He then turned west
towards Vicksburg. On May 16, at Champion Hill, Grant
defeated part of Pemberton’s army in a bloody action. The
Siege of Vicksburg: Kurz & Allison Lithogaph c.1888,
Library of Congress
next day, Federals drove the Confederate troops back into
the Vicksburg fortifications. After several attacks, Grant, reluctant to expend more of his men’s lives, surrounded the
city and began siege operations. Confederate soldiers and
civilians were surrounded by a powerful army, unable to obtain arms, ammunition, food or medicine, but still refused
to surrender.
Ulysses S. Grant
Born in 1822, Grant was the son of an Ohio leather tanner. He went to West Point rather against his will and graduated in the middle of his class. In the Mexican War he fought
under Gen. Zachary Taylor.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant was working in his
father’s leather store in Galena, Illinois. He was appointed
by the Governor to command an unruly volunteer regiment.
Grant whipped it into shape and by September 1861, he had
risen to the rank of brigadier general of volunteers.
The besieged city’s people and soldiers endured the hardships of sweltering heat, mosquitoes, exhaustion, hunger
from reduced rations, sickness, and depression. Soldiers and
civilians survived the best that they knew how. Some kept
diaries to help relieve the tension of battle. Others held tight
to the Bible and their religious beliefs for comfort.
Artillery batteries hammered Confederate fortifications
from land while gunboats blasted the city from the river. By
the end of June, Pemberton knew he would need to “capitulate upon the best attainable terms.” Grant and Pemberton
met on July 3rd. Grant wanted unconditional surrender.
Pemberton did not agree. The two parted without agreement.
Later that evening, Grant sent word to Pemberton that he
would parole the Confederate forces. At 10:00 am, on July 4,
1863, the weary Confederates put down their weapons and
marched out of their fortifications to be paroled. All men
had to sign a statement that they would not take up arms
against the U.S. until exchanged for Union soldiers instead
of being sent to a prison. (Learn about Civil War prisons at:
www.civilwarhome.com/prisons.htm)
The surrender of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, together
with the defeat of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern
Virginia at Gettysburg, July 1-3, were significant reversals for
the Confederacy.
Native Americans
He sought to win control of the Mississippi Valley. In February 1862, he took Fort Henry and then Fort Donelson.
When the Confederate commander asked for terms, Grant
replied, “No terms except an unconditional and immediate
surrender can be accepted.” The Confederates surrendered,
and President Lincoln promoted Grant to major general of
volunteers.
At Shiloh in April, Grant fought one of the bloodiest battles in the West and came out less well. President Lincoln
fended off demands for his removal by saying, “I can’t spare
this man—he fights.”
For his next major objective, Grant maneuvered and
fought skillfully to win Vicksburg, MS, the key city on the
Mississippi, and thus cut the Confederacy in two. Then he
broke the Confederate hold on Chattanooga, TN.
Lincoln appointed him General-in-Chief in March 1864.
Grant directed Sherman to drive through the South while he
himself, with the Army of the Potomac, pinned down Gen.
Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.
Finally, on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House,
Lee surrendered. Grant wrote out magnanimous terms of
surrender that would prevent treason trials.
As the symbol of Union victory during the Civil War, he
was a logical candidate for President. He was elected and
became the 18th U.S. President in 1869. He served two
terms.
The role of Native Americans during the Civil War is complex. Given their knowledge of the landscape and access to
resources, winning the allegiance of tribal groups and leaders was often a goal for both Union and Confederate generals. Tribal leaders formed alliances and thousands of Native
Americans served on both sides of the conflict. Some tribes
held slaves.
Some Cherokee leaders such as John Ross preferred to
stay neutral during the war. Others, such as Stand Waite,
were hopeful that allying with one side would help their
cause after the war. Waite became a brigadier general in the
Confederate Army, helping organize the First Regiment of
Cherokee Mounted Volunteers. Another notable example is
Seneca leader Ely Parker. Parker became a lieutenant colonel
on General Ulysses Grant’s staff. He later helped draft the
terms of surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. Upon learning that Parker was Native American, General Robert E. Lee
said “I’m glad to see one real American here” to which Parker
was said to have replied, “We are all Americans, sir.”
There are countless stories of the roles Native Americans
played throughout the course of the war. The Indian Territory, which was in present day Oklahoma, was the site of the
Battle of Honey Springs in July 1863. This battle provides a
rich example to explore the role of Native Americans on both
sides of the Civil War.
Learn more at:
www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/68honey/68honey.htm
Battle of Chickamauga
Legend holds that the word “Chickamauga” means “River of Death” in an old Indian language. It is an appropriate legend considering the brutal and deadly fighting that
took place along the creek of that name during the Battle of
Chickamauga, GA.
Chickamauga was the culmination of a campaign that
had begun three months earlier in Murfreesboro, TN. The
Union Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General
William S. Rosecrans, had occupied Murfreesboro following the Battle of Stones River, while the Confederate Army
of Tennessee, led by General Braxton Bragg, had dug in 20
miles away at Tullahoma.
Gen. Braxton Bragg & Gen. William Rosecrans: Library of
Congress
Throughout the spring of 1863, the two armies had warily
eyed each other until, in late June, Rosecrans began to move.
Over the next three months, he and Bragg carried out a campaign of maneuvering in which the Union general and his
larger army (60,000 men) tried to corner and destroy Bragg
and his smaller force (43,000 men). Bragg, however, skillfully avoided the destruction of his army as the two forces
moved southeast to Chattanooga.
In early September, Rosecrans moved south around Chattanooga and over Lookout Mountain into Georgia. Moving
to counter this development, Bragg left Chattanooga and
pulled back to Lafayette, GA. From there — knowing that
strong reinforcements in the form of General James Longstreet’s Corps from the Army of Northern Virginia were on
the way — Bragg took the offensive.
On September 18th, he moved forward to a position along
Chickamauga Creek where he formed the Confederate army
along a line that stretched for miles from Reed’s Bridge to
near Lee and Gordon’s Mill.
The Battle of Chickamauga began on the morning of September 19, 1864, when Union infantry collided with a force
of Confederate cavalry near Jay’s Mill on the northern edge
of the battlefield. From there the battle spread south for four
miles as both Rosecrans and Bragg fed more and more men
into the fight.
Neither of the commanders had wanted to fight along
Chickamauga Creek, as the area was one of heavy woods and
small fields with limited visibility. Command and control issues plagued both armies.
The day’s fighting was fierce and bloody, with the men
often fighting hand-to-hand in thick underbrush and woods.
Slowly, though the Confederates forced the Federal line of
battle back to the LaFayette Road about a mile west of where
the fighting had begun. There the first day of the battle sputtered to a close, with the moans and screams of thousands
of wounded penetrating the night. In some areas the woods
burned, tragically killing wounded soldiers who were unable
to walk or crawl away.
Both armies reorganized their lines during the night and
Bragg, growing more confident in his ability to defeat Rosecrans, planned to take the offensive at first light the next
morning. General Leonidas Polk was placed in command of
the right wing of the Southern army, while the newly arrived
General James Longstreet was given command of the left.
Polk was to begin the attack and the rest of the army would
then follow with a series of hammer-like blows down the
length of the line.
General George H. Thomas
Thomas held out until near sundown when he received orders from Rosecrans to withdraw and fell back to Missionary
Ridge. The next day the Federals retreated into the fortifications of Chattanooga.
The Battle of Chickamauga was one of the most stunning
Confederate victories of the Civil War. It was also one of the
most costly. More than 34,000 men in the two armies were
reported killed, wounded or missing.
General James Longstreet
Battle of Chickamauga: Kurz & Allison Lithogaph c.1890,
Library of Congress
Realizing that the battle was running behind schedule,
however, General Longstreet held back his main assault. Not
facing immediate attack on his right, Rosecrans began to
shift units to reinforce Thomas. This mistakenly led to the
creation of a gap in the Union line of battle directly at the
point where Longstreet would lead his main attack. It was a
critical mistake.
Finally unleashed, the Georgia general’s soldiers stormed
forward and General John Bell Hood’s command struck the
gap and pierced the Union line.
Longstreet quickly exploited the situation, pouring in additional troops and moving his forces to begin rolling up the
Union line. The Federal troops right and left of the point
where Hood broke the lines began to crumble and retreat
in confusion. General Rosecrans himself was swept from the
field by a mass of running soldiers, as were many of his subordinate commanders.
The only part of the Union army to hold was the force under the immediate command of General Thomas, who beat
back assault after assault at Snodgrass Hill. He would soon be
dubbed the “Rock of Chickamauga.”
The Confederate attack was slow in getting off, but as the
morning progressed the Battle of Chickamauga once again
flared to life.
Newspaper Activities
Find stories about military service,
but also people who chose to serve in
other ways: firefighters, police, teachers, volunteers, etc. What is it about
their service that stands out beyond
being a regular job? What sacrifices
may they make as part of their service?
Discuss ways that you and your class
can serve your school or community.
Sherman’s March to the Sea
From November 15 until December 21, 1864, Union
General William T. Sherman led some 60,000 soldiers on
a 285-mile march from Atlanta to Savannah, Georgia. The
purpose of this “March to the Sea” was to frighten Georgia’s
civilian population into abandoning the Confederate cause.
Sherman’s soldiers did not wantonly destroy towns in their
path, but rather focused on things of potential military value.
They stole food and livestock and burned the houses and
barns of people who tried to fight back (These groups of
foraging Union soldiers were nicknamed “bummers.”) They
also wanted to teach Georgians a lesson: “it isn’t so sweet to
secede,” one soldier wrote in a letter home, “as [they] thought
it would be.”
railroads provided Confederate troops with the things they
needed, he reasoned; and if he could destroy those things,
the Confederate war effort would collapse. Meanwhile, his
troops could undermine Southern morale by making life so
unpleasant for Georgia’s civilians that they would demand an
end to the war.
hurt Southern morale, made it impossible for the Confederates to fight at full capacity and likely hastened the end of
the war. “This Union and its Government must be sustained,
at any and every cost,” explained one of Sherman’s subordinates. “To sustain it, we must war upon and destroy the
organized rebel forces — must cut off their supplies, destroy
their communications…and produce among the people of
Georgia a thorough conviction of the personal misery which
attends war, and the utter helplessness and inability of their
Currier & Ives lithograph
General William T. Sherman: Library of Congress
The Yankees were “not only fighting hostile armies, but a
hostile people,” Sherman explained; as a result, they needed
to “make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand
of war.”
The Fall of Atlanta
General Sherman’s troops captured Atlanta on September
2, 1864. This was an important triumph, because Atlanta
was a railroad hub and the industrial center of the Confederacy: It housed munitions factories, foundries and warehouses
that kept the Confederate army supplied with food, weapons
and other goods. It stood between the Union Army and two
of its most prized targets: the Gulf of Mexico to the west
and Charleston to the East. It was also a symbol of Confederate pride and strength, and its fall made even the most
loyal Southerners doubt that they could win the war. (“Since
Atlanta,” South Carolinian Mary Boykin Chestnut wrote in
her diary, “I have felt as if…we are going to be wiped off the
earth.”)
The March to the Sea
After losing Atlanta, the Confederate army headed west
into Tennessee and Alabama, attacking Union supply lines
as they went. Sherman, reluctant to set off on a wild goose
chase across the South, split his troops into two groups. Major General George Thomas took some 60,000 men to meet
the Confederates in Nashville, while Sherman took the remaining 62,000 on an offensive march through Georgia to
Savannah, “smashing things” (he wrote) “to the sea.”
“Make Georgia Howl”
Sherman believed that the Confederacy derived its strength
not from its fighting forces but from the material and moral
support of sympathetic Southern whites. Factories, farms and
To that end, Sherman’s troops marched south toward Savannah in two wings, about 30 miles apart. On November
22, 3,500 Confederate cavalry started a skirmish with the
Union soldiers at Griswoldville, but that ended so badly —
650 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded, compared
to 62 Yankee casualties — that Southern troops initiated no
more battles. Instead, they fled South ahead of Sherman’s
troops, wreaking their own havoc as they went: They wrecked
bridges, chopped down trees and burned barns filled with
provisions before the Union army could reach them.
Sherman’s troops arrived in Savannah on December 21,
1864, about three weeks after they left Atlanta. The city was
undefended when they got there. (The 10,000 Confederates
who were supposed to be guarding it had already fled.) Sherman presented the city of Savannah and its 25,000 bales of
cotton to President Lincoln as a Christmas gift.
Early in 1865, Sherman and his men left Savannah and
marched northward through the Carolinas. In April, most of
the Confederate forces surrendered and the war was over.
Total War
Sherman’s “total war” in Georgia was brutal and destructive, but the key purpose of the campaign was achieved: it
Sherman’s Grand March: Harper’s Weekly 1864
‘rulers’ to protect them…If that terror and grief and even
want shall help to paralyze their husbands and fathers who
are fighting us…it is mercy in the end.”
Sherman After the War
For his military prowess, Sherman is justly renowned; he
succeeded Grant as commander in chief in 1869 and remained in that post until 1883. Two memorable remarks of
his also have entered history. Having written to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta in 1874 that “war is cruelty, and you cannot
refine it,” he sharpened this definition in a commencement
address at the Michigan Military Academy in 1879 to the
oft-quoted phrase, “War is hell.”
Five years later, when his name was frequently mentioned
as a prospective Republican nominee for president, Sherman
sent the Republican National Convention of 1884 the most
famous of all rejections: “I will not accept if nominated and
will not serve if elected.” Even today, “a Sherman” is wellunderstood slang for a firm refusal.
Newspaper Activity:
Choose a controversial current topic in the news where the government
and/or citizens are struggling with making a choice as to what to do.
Groups of students should research the topic both in the newspaper and
online, outlining the positions of the various parties involved. Students
will then chose opposing positions and then debate the merits of their
position against each other.
The Fall of Richmond and Appomatox Campaign
March 29 - April 9, 1865
The final campaign for Richmond, Virginia, the capital of
the Confederacy, began when the Federal Army of the Potomac crossed the James River in June 1864. Under General
U.S. Grant’s command, Federal troops applied constant pressure to the Confederate lines around Richmond and Petersburg. By autumn, three of the four railroads into Petersburg
had been cut. Once the remaining South Side Railroad was
severed, the Army of Northern Virginia would have no other
choice but to evacuate Petersburg and, therefore, the capital.
The Union II and VI Corps followed. Unknown to Lee, the
Federal cavalry and the V, XXIV, and XXV Corps were moving along shorter roads south of the Appomattox River to cut
him off. While in Farmville on April 7, Grant sent a letter
to Lee asking for the surrender of his army. Lee received the
letter, read it, and then handed it to one of his most trusted
corps commanders, Lt. General James Longstreet. Longstreet
tersely replied, “Not yet.” As Lee continued his march westward he knew the desperate situation his army faced. If he
could reach Appomattox Station before the Federal troops
he could receive rations sent from Lynchburg and then make
his way to Danville, VA. If not, he would have no choice but
to surrender.
Courier & Ives Lithograph: Library of Congress
Fort Sedgwick, Petersburg, VA
However, Lee’s concern stretched beyond the Confederate
capital. By February of 1865, two Federal armies, one under Major General William T. Sherman and the other under
Major General John M. Schofield, were moving through the
Carolinas. If not stopped, these armies could cut off Virginia
from the rest of the south. If these forces joined Grant at Petersburg, Lee’s men would face four armies instead of two.
Realizing the danger, Lee wrote the Confederate Secretary
of War on February 8, 1865: “You must not be surprised if
calamity befalls us.” Lee knew he would have to abandon the
Petersburg lines; the only question was when. Muddy roads
and the poor condition of the horses forced the Confederates
to remain in the trenches throughout March.
Grant seized the initiative. On March 29, Major General
Philip H. Sheridan’s cavalry and the V Corps began moving southwest toward the Confederate right flank and the
South Side Railroad. On the 1st of April, 21,000 Federal
troops smashed the 11,000-man Confederate force under
Major General George Pickett at an important road junction
known locally as Five Forks. Grant followed up this victory
with an all out offensive against Confederate lines on April
2nd.
With his supply lines cut, Lee had no choice but to order
Richmond and Petersburg evacuated on the night of April
2-3. Moving by previously determined routes, Confederate
columns left the trenches that they had occupied for nearly
ten months. Their immediate objective was Amelia Court
House, where forces from Richmond and Petersburg would
concentrate and receive rations sent from Richmond.
The march from Richmond and Petersburg started well
enough. Many Confederates, including Lee, seemed exhilarated to be in the field once again, but after the first day’s
march, signs of weariness and hunger began to appear. When
Lee reached Amelia Court House on April 4, he found, to
his dismay, the rations for his men had not arrived. Although
speed was crucial, the hungry men of the Army of Northern
Virginia needed supplies. Lee halted the march and sent wagons into the countryside to gather provisions. Local farmers
had little to give and the wagons returned practically empty.
The delay at Amelia meant a lost day of marching which
allowed the pursuing Federals time to catch up. Amelia
proved to be the turning point of the campaign.
Leaving Amelia Court House on April 5, the columns of
Lee’s army had traveled only a few miles before they found
Union cavalry and infantry squarely across their path.
Rather than attack the entrenched federal position, Lee
changed his plan. He would march his army west, around
the Federals, and attempted to supply his troops at Farmville
along the route of the South Side Railroad. Lee hoped that
he could put the rain-swollen Appomattox River between his
army and the Federals
Union cavalry attacked the Confederate wagon train at
Paineville, destroying a large number of wagons. Tired from
lack of sleep (Lee had ordered night marches to regain the
day he lost) and hungry, the men began falling out of the column, or broke ranks searching for food. Mules and horses,
also starving, collapsed under their loads.
As the retreating columns became more ragged, gaps developed in the line of march. At Sailor’s Creek (a few miles east
of Farmville), Union cavalry exploited such a gap to block
elements of Lee’s army until a much larger force of Union
infantry arrived to crush them.
Watching the debacle from a nearby hill, Lee exclaimed,
“My God! Has the army been dissolved?” Nearly 8,000 men
and 8 generals were lost in one stroke — killed, captured, or
wounded. The remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia
arrived in Farmville on April 7 where rations awaited them,
but the Union forces followed so quickly that the Confederate cavalry had to make a stand in the streets of the town to
allow their fellow troops to escape. Most Confederates never
received the much-needed rations.
Blocked again by Grant’s army, Lee once more swung west
hoping that he could be supplied farther down the rail line.
Robert E. Lee portrait by H.A. Ogden: Library of Congress
On the afternoon of April 8, the Confederate columns
halted a mile northeast of Appomattox Court House. That
night, artillery fire could be heard from Appomattox Station,
and the red glow to the west from Union campfires foretold that the end was near. Federal cavalry and the Army of
the James, marching on shorter roads, had blocked the way
south and west. Lee consulted with his generals and determined that one more attempt should be made to reach the
railroad and escape.
At dawn on April 9, General John B. Gordon’s Corps attacked the Union cavalry blocking the stage road, but after an initial success, Gordon sent word to Lee around 8:30
a.m., “...my command has been fought to a frazzle, and unless Longstreet can unite in the movement, or prevent these
forces from coming upon my rear, I cannot go forward.”
Receiving the message, Lee replied, “There is nothing left
for me to do but to go and see General Grant, and I would
rather die a thousand deaths.”
Source: National Park Service
www.nps.gov/apco/appomattox-campaign.htm
Surrender at Wilmer McLean House
Wilmer McLean House, Appomattox Court House, VA
Lee arrived at the McLean house about one o’clock on
April 9, 1865, and took a seat in the parlor. A half hour later,
the sound of horses on the stage road signaled the approach
of General Grant. Entering the house, Grant greeted Lee in
the center of the room. The generals presented a contrasting
appearance; Lee in a new uniform and Grant in his mudspattered field uniform. The two conversed in a very cordial
Camp Life
Enlisted Man’s Tent: Gettysburg National Military Park
“Soldiering is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror,” a Civil War soldier wrote to his wife. Soldiers spent weeks, and
sometimes months, between battles, even during active military campaigns. Their lives consisted of tedious daily routines. They participated in a range of activities to relieve the
boredom.
Life in camp was very different for officers and enlisted
men. Officers in the field lived better than enlisted men and
were allowed more comforts and freedoms. They slept one or
returned to civilian life. Grant responded that he would not
manner, for approximately 25 minutes.
The subject had not yet gotten around to surrender until change the terms as written, but would order his officers to
finally, Lee, feeling the anguish of defeat, brought Grant’s allow any Confederate claiming a horse or a mule to keep it.
attention to it. Grant, who later confessed to being embar- General Lee agreed that this concession would go a long way
rassed at having to ask for the surrender from Lee, said sim- toward promoting healing.
ply that the terms would be just as he had outlined them in
Grant’s generosity extended further. When Lee mentioned
a previous letter. These terms would parole officers and en- that his men had been without rations for several days, the
listed men but required that all Confederate military equip- Union commander arranged for rations to be sent to the
ment be relinquished.
25,000 hungry Confederates.
The discussion between the generals then drifted into the
After formal copies of the surrender terms and Lee’s accepprospects for peace, but Lee, once again taking the lead, asked tance had been drafted and exchanged, the meeting ended.
Grant to put his terms in writing. When Grant finished, he
Read the Articles of Agreement Related to the
handed the terms to his former adversary, and Lee — first Surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at:
donning spectacles used for reading — quietly looked them www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=39
over. When he finished reading,
the bespectacled Lee looked up at
Grant and remarked, “This will
Lee’s Farewell Address to the Army of Northern Virhave a very happy effect on my
ginia April 9, 1865
army.”
After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and
Lee asked if the terms allowed
fortitude,
the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to
his men to keep their horses, for
in the Confederate army, men
overwhelming numbers and resources.
owned their mounts. Lee exI need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who
plained that his men would need
have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result
these animals to farm once they
from no distrust of them; but feeling that valor and devotion could ac-
complish nothing that could compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless
sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen.
By the terms of the agreement, officers and men can return to their
homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from a consciousness of duty faithfully performed; and
I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessings and
protection.
With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your
Country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell.
two officers to a tent. Since they
provided their own personal gear,
items varied greatly and reflected
individual taste.
Each junior officer was allowed
one trunk of personal belongings
that was carried in a baggage wagon. Higher-ranking officers were
allowed more baggage. Unlike infantrymen, who slept and sat on
whatever nature provided, officers
sometimes had the luxury of furniture.
Enlisted men, unlike their officers, carried all their belongings on their back. On long marches, men were unwilling
to carry more than the absolute essentials. Even so, soldiers
ended up carrying about 30 to 40 pounds.
Each soldier was issued half of a tent, designed to join with
another soldier’s half to make a full size tent. The odd man
lost out.
When suitable wooden poles were not available for tent
supports, soldiers would use their rifles with the bayonet
stuck in the ground.
From reveille to taps, soldiers endured the daily round
of roll calls, meals, drills, inspections, and fatigue duties.
Throughout this tedious and seemingly endless routine,
it was often the personal necessities sent or brought from
home, or purchased from sutlers (licensed provisioners to
the army) that made camp life tolerable. Many items were
used for personal hygiene, grooming, and keeping uniforms
in repair.
Confederate and Union soldiers added clothing and
equipment to their military issue. To make their life more
tolerable, they brought various personal items to camp or
were given them by family and friends.
Officers of 114th Penn. Infantry, Petersburg, VA Playing
Cards in 1864: Library of Congress
Like soldiers of all wars, games of chance and the exchange
of money were popular in both armies. A successful gambler
could send money home to help in the hard times shared by
many. The most popular game was poker. Although many
officers forbade gambling in their regiments, the practice
couldn’t be stopped. It wasn’t unusual for some soldiers to
lose a month’s pay on unlucky wagers. Soldiers could pass
several hours away playing games with friends. Soldiers
played board games including checkers or draughts, chess,
dominoes, cards, and other games of chance.
Drinking intoxicating beverages and smoking tobacco was
common in both armies. In moderation, these habits instilled
a sense of well-being and normalcy. Along with a lot of social
drinking, there was some hard drinking, particularly among
officers. Drunkenness was not tolerated in either Federal or
Confederate camps.
Whittling is an age-old pastime. Skilled hands and idle
hours often resulted in surprising displays of what has come
to be known as “soldier art.”
Music played an important role in the Civil War army.
Individually, and in groups, playing musical instruments and
singing were common in the soldier’s life in camp and on
the march.
It was not surprising that soldiers living with the possibility of death or injury in battle sought spiritual comfort and
assurance. In camp, religious services were held whenever
possible. Worship at camp was much like worship at home.
Each soldier could spend his free time studying the scriptures
or in private prayer.
The American Civil War was the first to be truly photographically recorded. The war’s most well known photographer, Mathew Brady, inspired many other photographers to
record the war’s most difficult and harrowing moments. Despite technical limitations, intrepid photographers captured
many aspects of the conflict, including officers and their
men, in camp, on the battlefield, and in the studio.
Photographs quickly became an easy way to preserve a moment during tumultuous times. Soldiers took advantage of
any opportunity to have their “likeness” made for the folks
back home.
For more on Camp Life and images of these topics visit the
National Park Service sites at:
www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/gettex
www.nps.gov/archive/gett/soldierlife/cwarmy.htm
Chaplain Conducting Mass for the 69th New York State Militia at Fort
Corcoran, Washington, DC 1861: Mathew B. Brady, National Archives
The Navies of the Civil War
As the Civil War raged on the land, the two national navies
— Union and Confederate — created another war on the
water. The naval war was one of sudden, spectacular lightning battles as well as continual and fatal vigilance on the
coasts, rivers, and seas.
President Abraham Lincoln set the Union’s first naval goal
when he declared a blockade of the Southern coasts called
the Anaconda Plan. The plan was to cut off Southern trade
with the outside world and prevent sale of the Confederacy’s
major crop, cotton. The task was daunting; the Southern
coast measured over 2,500 miles and the Union navy numbered less than 40 usable ships. The Union also needed a
“brown water navy” of gunboats to support army campaigns
along the Mississippi River.
USS Cairo, a 512-ton “City” class ironclad river gunboat,
was part of the U.S. Army’s Western Gunboat Flotilla.
The Southern states had few resources compared to the
North: a handful of shipyards, a small merchant marine, and
no navy at all. Yet the Confederates needed a navy to break
the Union blockade and to defend the port cities. Confeder-
ate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory, scrambled to find
ships and even took on an offensive task: attacking Union
merchant shipping on the high seas.
The first task for Lincoln’s naval secretary, Gideon Welles,
was straightforward, but huge: acquire enough vessels to
make every Southern inlet, port, and bay dangerous for
trade. The Northern navy immediately began building dozens of new warships and purchased hundreds of merchant
ships to convert into blockaders by adding a few cannons.
The result was a motley assortment that ranged from old
sailing ships to New York harbor ferryboats. Critics called it
Welles’s “soapbox navy.”
The Union’s blockading squadrons needed not only ships,
but also bases on the Southern coast from which to operate.
In 1861 the Union began a series of attacks on port cities like
Hatteras, NC, and Port Royal, SC, along the southeastern
seaboard. Poorly defended, they fell to Union gunnery and
were seized to use as bases. Though never airtight, by late
1862 the blockade had become a major impediment to Rebel
trade.
With a smaller fleet and fewer shipyards than the North,
the Confederates counted on making the ships they had as
formidable as possible. They decided to challenge the Union
navy with the latest technology: ironclads. Though iron-armored ships had appeared in Europe in the 1850s, Union
warships were still built of wood. The first Confederate ironclad began its career as a Union cruiser, the Merrimack, captured by the Southerners when they seized Norfolk navy yard
in Virginia. The Confederates ripped off nearly everything
above the waterline of the ship—which they renamed CSS
Virginia—and replaced it with a casemate of heavy timbers
covered by four inches of iron plating. Though underpowered and crude, as yet there was no match for her in Lincoln’s
wooden navy.
The Union quickly met this challenge with the ingenuity
of inventor John Ericsson. Most of his ironclad—the Monitor—was underwater. All that appeared above board was a
flat main deck and a circular housing carrying two guns.
This “tin can on a raft” was the world’s first rotating gun
turret, and it was protected by eight inches of iron. Monitor
met Virginia in March 1862 at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
Their three-hour engagement—often fought at point-blank
range—was the world’s first battle between ironclad vessels.
The engagement itself was a draw but naval warfare was
changed forever. Suddenly the wooden naval vessel—and
most of the Union fleet—was obsolete. Shipyards North and
South began to turn out ironclads as quickly as possible.
Early 1862 also marked the beginning of the Union cam-
Battle of the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia: By Bill
Henry
paigns to split the Confederacy apart along the Mississippi
River. A fleet of gunboats was built to support Ulysses S.
Grant’s army as it moved from Illinois down the Mississippi
River into the heart of the South. Most of these vessels were
little more than flat-bottomed, steam-driven barges with
heavy timbered sides; the most powerful, like the Cairo, were
also iron plated. Grant’s army and the brown water navy captured Rebel strongholds such as Forts Henry and Donelson
in Tennessee. At the same time, a squadron in the Gulf of
Mexico, under David G. Farragut, boldly took on the defenses of New Orleans, LA, with the intention of moving
past the city and northward up the Mississippi River. In April
1862, Farragut’s fleet fought past two formidable forts and
forced New Orleans to surrender. In July, 1863, after a series
of hard-fought campaigns against both Rebel forts and fleets,
these two Union forces—one moving south and one moving
north—would meet at Vicksburg, MS and sever everything
west of the River from the rest of the Confederacy.
In April 1863, the Union navy turned with force on the
Southern port cities when it took on the defenses of Charleston, SC. The Confederates were well prepared—having had
two years to position guns, floating obstructions and mines
(torpedoes)—and the attack failed. Charleston did not fall
until the war was nearly ended. After the debacle at Charleston, two other major port cities were targeted: Mobile, Alabama—the last major port in the Gulf—and Wilmington,
North Carolina—the last and most important Atlantic gateway in the Confederacy. Two large forts defended Mobile but
these fell under Farragut’s assault in August 1864. In January
1865, after a failed first attempt, the largest Union fleet ever
assembled attacked Fort Fisher—the key to Wilmington’s defense—and the stronghold fell. Its loss deprived Confederate
General Robert E. Lee’s army in Virginia of a major supply
source and contributed directly to the end of the war.
have guns that we load up on Sunday and shoot all the rest
of the week.”
Balloons and Submarines
Other newfangled weapons took to the air — for example,
Union observers floated above Confederate encampments
and battle lines in hydrogen-filled passenger balloons, sending reconnaissance information back to their commanders
via telegraph. “Iron-clad” warships prowled up and down the
coast, maintaining a Union blockade of Confederate ports.
For their part, Confederate sailors tried to sink these ironclads with submarines. The first of these, the Confederate HL
Hunley, was a metal tube 40 feet long and 4 feet across that
held an 8-man crew. In 1864, the Hunley sank the Union
blockade ship Housatonic off the coast of Charleston but
was itself wrecked in the process.
communicate in real time with his officers on the battlefield. The War Department’s telegraph office enabled him to
monitor battlefield reports, lead real-time strategy meetings
and deliver orders to his men. Here, as well, the Confederate
army was at a disadvantage: They lacked the technological
and industrial ability to conduct such a large-scale communication campaign.
In 1861, the Union Army established the U.S. Military
Telegraph Corps, led by a young railroad man named Andrew Carnegie. The next year alone, the U.S.M.T.C. trained
1,200 operators, strung 4,000 miles of telegraph wire and
sent more than a million messages to and from the battlefield.
Civil War Technology
The Civil War was a time of great social and political upheaval. It was also a time of great technological change. Inventors and military men devised new types of weapons and
technologies like the railroad and telegraph. Innovations like
these did not just change the way people fought wars: they
also changed the way people lived.
Minié Balls & Repeating Rifles
Before the Civil War, infantry soldiers typically carried
muskets that held just one bullet at a time. The “effective
range” of muskets was only about 80 yards. Therefore, armies
typically fought battles at a relatively close range.
Rifles could shoot a bullet up to 7,000 yards — and were
more accurate— but were difficult to load and took too
much time between shots.
In 1848, a French army officer named Claude Minié invented a cone-shaped lead bullet with a diameter smaller
than that of the rifle barrel. Soldiers could load these “Minié
balls” quickly. Rifles with Minié bullets were more accurate
and more dead than muskets, which forced infantries to
change the way they fought: Even troops who were far from
the line of fire had to protect themselves by building elaborate trenches and other fortifications.
Rifles with Minié bullets were easy and quick to load, but
soldiers still had to pause and reload after each shot. This
was inefficient and dangerous. By 1863 there was another
option: so-called repeating rifles, or weapons that could fire
more than one bullet before needing a reload. The most famous of these guns, the Spencer carbine, could fire seven
shots in 30 seconds.
These weapons were available in limited number to
Confederate H.L. Hunley Submarine: Drawing by Conrad
Chapman, Confederate Museum, Richmond, VA
Spencer Carbine 7-Shot Rifle
Northern troops but hardly at all to Southern ones: Southern
factories had neither the equipment nor the know-how to
produce them. “I think the Johnnys [Confederate soldiers]
are getting rattled; they are afraid of our repeating rifles,”
one Union soldier wrote. “They say we are not fair, that we
The Railroad
More important than these advanced weapons were largerscale technological innovations such as the broader-than-ever
use of the railroad. Once again, the Union had the advantage. When the war began, there were 22,000 miles of railroad track in the North and just 9,000 in the South, and the
North had almost all of the nation’s track and locomotive
factories. Furthermore, Northern tracks tended to be “standard gauge,” which meant that any train car could ride on
any track. Southern tracks, by contrast, were not standardized, so people and goods frequently had to switch cars as
they traveled--an expensive and inefficient system.
Both sides used railroads to move troops and supplies from
one place to another. They also used thousands of soldiers to
keep tracks and trains safe from attack.
The Telegraph
Abraham Lincoln was the first president who was able to
U.S. Military Telegraph Battery Wagon
Civil War Photography
The Civil War was the first war to be extensively documented through the lens of a camera. Taking and developing photos using the so-called “wet-plate” process was a meticulous, multi-step procedure that required more than one
“camera operator” and lots of chemicals and equipment. As a
result, the images of the Civil War are not action snapshots:
They are portraits and landscapes. Alexander Gardner and
Mathew Brady were two well-known Union Civil War photographers, as was George Cook in the South.
Technological innovation had an enormous impact on the
way people fought the Civil War and on the way they remember it. Many of these inventions have played important
roles in military and civilian life ever since.
African-American Soliders in the Civil War
On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed
the Emancipation Proclamation: “All persons held as slaves
within any States…in rebellion against the United States,”
it declared, “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
(More than one million slaves in loyal border states and in
Union-occupied parts of Louisiana and Virginia were not affected by this proclamation.) It also declared “such persons
[that is, African-American men] of suitable condition, will
be received into the armed service of the United States.” For
the first time, black soldiers could fight for the U.S. Army.
A White Man’s War
Black soldiers had fought in the Revolutionary War, and
unofficially in the War of 1812, but state militias had excluded African Americans since 1792. The U.S. Army had never
accepted black soldiers. The U.S. Navy, on the other hand,
was more progressive: African-Americans had been serving
as shipboard firemen, stewards, coal heavers and even boat
pilots since 1861.
After the Civil War broke out, abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass argued that the enlistment of black soldiers
would help the North win the war and would be a huge step
in the fight for equal rights: “Once let the black man get
upon his person the brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle
on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in
his pocket,” Douglass said, “and there is no power on earth
which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”
However, this was just what President Lincoln feared. He
worried that arming African Americans, particularly former
or escaped slaves, would push the loyal border states to secede, making it almost impossible for the Union to win the
war.
The Second Confiscation and Militia Act (1862)
However, after two grueling years of war, President Lincoln began to reconsider his position on black soldiers. The
war did not appear to be near an end, and the Union Army
badly needed soldiers. White volunteers were dwindling in
number, and African-Americans were eager to fight.
The Second Confiscation and Militia Act of July 17, 1862,
was the first step toward the enlistment of African Americans
in the Union Army. It did not explicitly invite blacks to join
the fight, but it did authorize the president “to employ as
many persons of African descent as he may deem necessary
and proper for the suppression of this rebellion…in such
manner as he may judge best for the public welfare.”
The War Department issued General Order 143 on May
22, 1863, creating the United States Colored Troops. (Read
Order 143 at:
www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=35)
Slaves’ Role in Their Own Liberation
Slaves played a critical role in their own liberation. Southern slaves deserted plantations and fled to Union lines. Slaves
also staged a few small insurrections during the war as the
slave system itself began to unravel. Planters were stunned
to see trusted house slaves and field drivers lead field hands
in deserting to the Union army. Eventually, 90,000 former
slaves fought as soldiers in the Union army.
Confederate Threats
In general, the Union army was reluctant to use AfricanAmerican troops in combat. This was partly due to racism:
many Union officers believed that black soldiers were not
as skilled or as brave as white soldiers. By this logic, they
thought that African Americans were better suited for jobs as
carpenters, cooks, guards, scouts and teamsters.
Black soldiers and their officers were also in grave danger
if they were captured in battle. Confederate President Jefferson Davis called the Emancipation Proclamation “the most
execrable measure in the history of guilty man” and promised
that black prisoners of war would be enslaved or executed
on the spot. (Their white commanders would likewise be
punished—even executed—for what the Confederates called
“inciting servile insurrection.”) Threats of Union reprisal
against Confederate prisoners forced Southern officials to
treat black soldiers who had been free before the war somewhat better than they treated black soldiers who were former
slaves—but in neither case was the treatment particularly
good. Union officials tried to keep their troops out of harm’s
way as much as possible by keeping most black soldiers away
from the front lines.
U.S. Colored Troops
The Fight for Equal Pay
Even as they fought to end slavery in the Confederacy, African-American Union soldiers fought against another injustice as well. The U.S. Army paid black soldiers $10 a week
(minus a clothing allowance, in some cases), while white soldiers got $3 more (plus a clothing allowance, in some cases).
Congress passed a bill authorizing equal pay for black and
white soldiers in 1864.
By the time the war ended in 1865, about 180,000 black
men had served as soldiers in the U.S. Army. This was about
10 percent of the total Union fighting force. Most—about
90,000—were former (or “contraband”) slaves from the
Confederate states. About half of the rest came from the loyal
border states, while the remainder were free blacks from the
North. Forty thousand black soldiers died in the war: 10,000
in battle and 30,000 from illness or infection.
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry
Early in February 1863, the abolitionist Governor John
A. Andrew of Massachusetts issued a call for black soldiers.
Massachusetts did not have many African-American residents, but by the time 54th Infantry regiment headed off to
training camp two weeks later more than 1,000 men had volunteered. Many came from other states, such as New York,
Indiana and Ohio; some even came from Canada. One-quarter of the volunteers came from slave states and the Caribbean. Fathers and sons (some as young as 16) enlisted together.
The most famous enlistees were Charles and Lewis Douglass,
two sons of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
To lead the 54th Massachusetts, Governor Andrew chose a
young white officer named Robert Gould Shaw. Shaw’s parents were wealthy and prominent abolitionist activists. Shaw
himself had dropped out of Harvard to join the Union Army
and had been injured in Battle at Antietam. He was just 25
years old.
So Full of Hope and Glory
At nine o’clock on the morning on May 28, 1863, the
54th’s 1,007 black soldiers and 37 white officers gathered in
the Boston Common and prepared to head to the battlefields
of the South. Cheering well-wishers, including the anti-slav-
ery advocates William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and
Frederick Douglass, lined Boston’s streets. “I know not,”
Governor Andrew said at the close of the parade, “where in
all human history to any given thousand men in arms there
has been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so
full of hope and glory as the work committed to you.” That
evening, the 54th Infantry boarded a transport ship bound
for the South.
Tragedy at Fort Wagner
On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts prepared to
storm Fort Wagner, which guarded the Port of Charleston.
Robert Gould Shaw: Library of Congress
At dusk, Shaw gathered 600 of his men on a narrow strip of
sand just outside Wagner’s fortified walls and readied them
for action. “I want you to prove yourselves,” he said. “The
eyes of thousands will look on what you do tonight.”
As night fell, Shaw led his men over the walls of the fort.
Unfortunately, the Union generals had miscalculated: 1,700
Confederate soldiers waited inside the fort, ready for battle.
The men of the 54th were outgunned and outnumbered.
Two hundred and eighty one of the 600 charging soldiers
were killed, wounded or captured. Shaw himself was shot in
the chest on his way over the wall and died instantly.
The 54th lost the battle at Fort Wagner, but they did a
great deal of damage there. Confederate troops abandoned
the fort soon afterward. For the next two years, the regiment
participated in a series of successful siege operations in South
Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The 54th Massachusetts returned to Boston in September 1865.
Storming Fort Wagner: Kurz & Allison Lithogaph c1890,
Library of Congress
Women in the Civil War
Harper’s Weekly, September 6, 1862
In many ways, the coming of the Civil War challenged the
ideology of Victorian domesticity that had defined the lives
of men and women in the antebellum era (1812 to start of
Civil War). In the North and in the South, the war forced
women into public life in ways they could scarcely have
imagined a generation before.
In the years before the Civil War, the lives of American
women were shaped by a set of ideals that historians call “the
Cult of True Womanhood.” As men’s work moved away from
the home and into shops, offices and factories, the household
became a new kind of place: a private, feminized domestic
sphere, a “haven in a heartless world.” “True women” devoted their lives to creating a clean, comfortable, nurturing
home for their husbands and children.
During the Civil War, however, American women turned
their attention to the world outside the home. Thousands of
women in the North and South joined volunteer brigades
and signed up to work as nurses.
The activist Dorothea Dix, the superintendent of Army
nurses, put out a call for responsible, maternal volunteers
“past 30 years of age, healthy, plain almost to repulsion in
dress and devoid of personal attractions.” (Famous writer
Louisa May Alcott was a Union nurse.)
Army nurses traveled providing “humane and efficient
care for wounded, sick and dying soldiers.”
Very few nurses went out onto the battlefield under fire.
Clara Barton was one that came under fire at the Battle of
Antietam. A soldier she was treating was killed as she worked
on him.
“I did not wait for reporters and journalists to tell us that
a battle had been fought. I went in while the battle raged.”
— Clara Barton, 1862.
Women also organize ladies’ aid societies to supply clothing, food, and funds raised to support the troops. It was the
first time in American history that women played a significant role in a war effort. By the end of the war, these experiences had expanded Americans’ definitions of “true womanhood.”
Learn more about Women in the Civil War at:
www.history.com/topics/women-in-the-civil-war
Lincoln Assassination
Courier & Ives Lithograph, Library of Congress
President Lincoln had guided the country through the
Civil War. By April of 1865, he began to concentrate on reconstruction of the Union and life with his family following
the presidency. On April 14th he and his wife, Mary, took a
carriage ride and talked of the future. He seemed more cheerful than he had been in a long time.
Later that evening Lincoln and Mary attended a play at
Ford’s Theatre. At 10:30 p.m., southern sympathizer John
Wilkes Booth entered the presidential theater box, put a derringer pistol to the back of Lincoln’s head, and fired.
Lincoln was immediately taken to the Petersen House, a
rooming house across the street from the theater. He stayed
alive for nearly nine hours after being shot, although he was
unconscious the entire time. On April 15, 1865, at 7:22
a.m., Abraham Lincoln died.
He was the first American president to be assassinated. A
shocked nation was thrown into mourning.
Newspaper Activities:
One of the most useful ways to reflect on the significance of any leader is to write an obituary. Read one
or two obituaries in the newspaper
as examples. Then write an obituary that captures Lincoln’s life and
his importance. Share them as a
class.
Reconstruction 1865-1877
The Union victory in the Civil War in 1865 gave some
4 million slaves their freedom. Yet the process of rebuilding the South during the Reconstruction period introduced
a new set of significant challenges. Under the administration of President Andrew Johnson, in 1865 and 1866, new
southern state legislatures passed restrictive “black codes” to
control the labor and behavior of former slaves and other
African Americans. Outrage in the North over these codes
eroded support for the approach known as Presidential Reconstruction and led to the triumph of the more radical wing
of the Republican Party. During Radical Reconstruction,
which began in 1867, newly enfranchised blacks gained a
voice in government for the first time in American history,
winning election to southern state legislatures and even to
the U.S. Congress. In less than a decade, however, reactionary forces— including the Ku Klux Klan— would reverse
the changes wrought by Radical Reconstruction in a violent
backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.
Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
13th Amendment
Lincoln and the Republican Party recognized that the
Emancipation Proclamation, as a war measure, might have
no constitutional validity once the war was over. The legal
framework of slavery would still exist in the former Confederate states as well as in the Union slave states that had been
exempted from the proclamation. So the party committed
itself to a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. The
overwhelmingly Republican Senate passed the Thirteenth
Amendment by more than the necessary two-thirds majority
on April 8, 1864. But not until January 31, 1865, did enough
Democrats in the House abstain or vote for the amendment
to pass it by a bare two-thirds. By December 18, 1865, the
requisite three-quarters of the states had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which ensured that forever after:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction.”
14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 to protect the
rights of native-born Black Americans, whose rights were being denied as recently-freed slaves. It was written in a manner
so as to prevent state governments from ever denying citizenship to blacks born in the United States.
Section 1 states: All persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they
reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Learn more at: www.14thamendment.us
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men (not women) the right to vote by declaring that “The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by
any state on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude.” Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the
promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized
for almost a century.
Preservation Revolution
The Civil War Trust’s story began in 1987, when twenty
or so stalwart souls met to discuss what could be done to
protect the rapidly disappearing battlefields around them.
They called themselves the Association for the Preservation
of Civil War Sites (APCWS) and they were spurred to action
by destruction of Northern Virginia battlefields like Chantilly, where today only five acres remain. Watching the constantly expanding suburbs of Washington, D.C., they knew
that it was only a matter of time before other battlefields were
similarly swallowed up. The only way to save these sites for
posterity, they decided, was to buy the physical landscapes
themselves.
As word of efforts to protect these battlefields spread
among the Civil War community, both membership and accomplishment lists began to grow steadily
In 1991, another national organization, the Civil War
Trust was founded to further efforts to protect these vanishing historic landscapes. Eight years later, in an attempt to
increase the efficiency with which preservation opportunities could be pursued, the two groups merged to become a
single, more effective, organization (first called the Civil War
Preservation Trust, and recently shortened back to the Civil
War Trust).
With a single organization combining the influence and
resources of its two successful predecessors, a battlefield
preservation revolution began. Since the merger, the Civil
War Trust has nearly tripled the base of preservationists from
which Civil War Trust draws support. The organization can
now claim to have saved more than 30,000 acres of hallowed
ground in 20 states. By saving battlefield land at four times
the rate of the National Park Service, this organization, which
began so humbly two decades ago, has become the number
one entity saving battlefield land in America today.
Now in its third decade in the business of Civil War land
preservation, Civil War Trust recognizes the importance of
working closely with partner groups, federal and state agencies, local governments, community-minded businesses and
willing sellers who see the intrinsic benefits of historic preservation. The Civil War Trust will continue working to educate
Americans about the plight of the fields where our national
identity was shaped. And the Civil War Trust will continue
to be on the front lines of preservation, standing guard over
history.
Teachers, students, and communities can learn how to save
hallowed ground in their state or city at: www.civilwar.org.
Civil War Web links
HISTORY.com: www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war
Civil War Trust: www.civilwar.org
CWT Lesson Plans & Curricula: www.civilwar.org/education/
Census of 1860 (slaves numbers): www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html
Civil War Discovery Trail: http://civilwardiscoverytrail.org
Civil War Timeline: www.civilwar.org/150th-anniversary/this-day-in-the-civil-war.html
Civil War Web Links – Univ. of Tennessee: http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/warweb.html
Generals of the Civil War: www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History: www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/modules.php
& www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/module_pop_intro.php?module_id=277
Glossary of Civil War Terms: www.civilwar.org/education/history/glossary/glossary.html
Great American History – Civil War Outline: www.greatamericanhistory.net/outlines.htm
Hallowed Ground: www.hallowedground.org
Student Service Learning Project: www.hallowedground.org/content/view/537/52/
Harper’s Weekly Civil War Newspapers: www.sonofthesouth.net
History Standards: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/standards/era5-5-12.html
Letters and Diaries: www.civilwarhome.com/links6.htm#Letters
List of Major Battles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_Civil_War_battles
Medicine: http://civilwarmed.org & http://ehistory.osu.edu/uscw/features/medicine/cwsurgeon
National Park Service: www.nps.gov/civilwar
Photography and Images of the Civil War: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml www.archives.gov/research/military/civil-war/photos - www.civilwarphotography.org www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/gettex
Primary Sources: www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources
Prisons: www.civilwarhome.com/prisons.htm
Slavery: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit
Soldier Life in the Camps: www.nps.gov/archive/gett/soldierlife/cwarmy.htm www.nps.gov/history/museum/exhibits/gettex
The Civil War - Film by Ken Burns: www.pbs.org/civilwar
Warfare: www.civilwar.org/education/history/warfare-and-logistics
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
Women & Children: www.history.com/topics/women-in-the-civil-war - http://library.duke.edu/specialcollections/bingham/
guides/cwdocs.html - www.civilwar.org/education/history/on-the-homefront/culture/southernchild.html
HISTORY Commemorates the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War
®
Over the course of over 4 years, starting in April 1861,
the American Civil War shook the nation to its core, leaving
more casualties than all other American wars combined. This
year, organizations and communities throughout the nation
will start a four-year commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the war. Reflecting back on the Civil War gives us
an opportunity to consider the conflict’s causes and consequences, and to assess new information scholars have uncovered. HISTORY is proud to be working with organizations
throughout the country to help educators and their students
engage with the history of the Civil War and assess the legacy
of this critical chapter in our nation’s past.
In 2011, HISTORY will feature many new and original
on-air Civil War themed programs, giving viewers powerful
new perspectives on the enormity of the war and the transformations that resulted from this conflict. The on-air programming will be accompanied by an equally robust set of
websites and special content areas on History.com.
The cornerstone of HISTORY’s Civil War programming
in 2011 is an all-new special, Gettysburg (check History.com
for dates and times). During the war and in retrospect, several turning points took on amplified meaning, coming to
represent larger truths about this profound conflict. The 3day battle that took place in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania starting on July 1, 1863 is one such event. Over 50,000 soldiers
lost their lives or were injured in this battle. The epic clash
and its aftermath also set the stage for President Lincoln’s
timeless Gettysburg Address.
Raw, emotional, and immersive, Gettysburg puts viewers
inside the battle to gain new insights into this complex and
costly battle. Executive produced for HISTORY by Ridley
and Tony Scott, this feature brings the story of Gettysburg to
a new generation of viewers. As many educators know all too
well, today’s students are captivated by computer-generated
imagery (“CGI”), often used to create realistic projections of
the future. But this kind of imagery can also be a powerful
way for students to gain entry into the past.
Stripping away romanticized concepts of the past, Gettysburg introduces little known stories about the everyday soldiers and citizens who waged this fierce battle, or who were
unexpectedly caught up in the crossfire. With compelling
CGI and powerful action footage, this Gettysburg program
can transform students’ understanding of the complexity and
significance of the Civil War by focusing carefully on those
who fought, and those whose lives were changed forever by
the battle..
Do we remember Gettysburg because of the scale of the
event, or because of its significance as a Northern battle? Or,
did Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address ensure that we would weigh
these events more heavily than others in the final analysis of
the war? These are critical questions that students can ask before and after they watch. Gettysburg and similar new Civil
War films should make students care more deeply about asking and answering these questions. To download free classroom guides and resources associated with this program, visit
us online at: www.history.com/classroom
This year, History.com has developed an engaging way to
learn about key people, places, events and technology that
defined America’s greatest conflict. This interactive site called
“Civil War 150” was created with the input of historians and
scholars, who ranked the crucial things they feel everyone
should know about the war. From the well-known to the
surprising, this list will interest Civil War enthusiasts as well
as new viewers eager to learn more.
The “Civil War 150” list is not intended to be definitive,
but is a great starting point. At the site, students can make
their own choices and rankings, seeing how their picks compare with those of the historians. Additionally, the site allows
users to delve into the texture of the war through six interactive info-graphics on topics such as “Who They Were” and
“How They Died.” These features give students a visually
compelling perspective on what the war meant and how it
was lived by everyday Americans of all backgrounds.
Lt. Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th
Maine Regiment was among the many Civil War soldiers
who recorded their experiences in battle. Chamberlain described the scene of a battle: “But out of that silence rose
new sounds more appalling still; a strange ventriloquism, of
which you could not locate the source, a smothered moan, as
if a thousand discords were flowing together into a key-note
weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with
its nearness...” While the Civil War may seem long past to
many students, its legacy is “startling with its nearness” as
well. Bringing the voices of those who lived through the Civil
War era can motivate students to explore the costs, consequences, and enormity of the war.
The Civil War anniversary presents educators and historians with an opportunity to help students grasp the profound
consequences of slavery in American society. The role of slavery in the Civil War, the role of African American soldiers in
the war, and the consequences for the 4 million slaves who
were freed at the end of the war are among the broad topics
the 150th anniversary gives us the opportunity to examine.
HISTORY has called upon some of the nation’s leading Civil
War scholars to discuss these topics. Teachers and students
can find short video segments on many topics related to slavery and the Civil War online at:
www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war
One of the best ways for teachers, students, and families
to learn about the Civil War hands-on is to visit one of the
many battlefields and historic sites associated with the war.
HISTORY is proud to be leading a national effort to encourage all Americans to visit these sites, and to help preserve
them for future generations. The “Give 150” campaign, one
branch of HISTORY’s overall Civil War initiative, invites the
public to give contributions to help preserve the legacy of the
Civil War. These donations will go directly to the National
Park Foundation and the Civil War Trust, two organizations
actively involved in maintaining and preserving Civil War
sites and lands. To learn more about this campaign, visit us
online at: www.give150.com.
Over the next 4 years, HISTORY will collaborate with
organizations including the Library of Congress, National
History Day, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership, the American Association of State and Local History, and others to provide content related to the Civil War.
You can find links to these organizations throughout this
supplement, and online at History.com. We hope you find
this supplement useful, and we look forward to hearing from
teachers and students as we work together to assess the meaning and on-going significance of the Civil War to our nation’s
past, and its future.
A soldier pauses in Gettysburg, airing on HISTORY
A scene from Gettysburg, a HISTORY special presentation
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